06 The one thing to make your scary goal feel fun and easy
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[00:00:00] And welcome to the scary goals club. I am your host, Hazel Robertson. And I believe that to make the impact that you know, you're called to make in the world, it requires setting bigger, scarier goals, and then becoming the person who creates them. That is what I am here to show you how to do. That's what we're diving into.
Mindset tools, tricks, really simple, practical, actionable steps. You can take and start applying straight away. Cause. Or whatever you believe, we have this one life that we definitely know about. Start making the impact you know you want to make in the world. Fear is not a reason to stop. We keep going. We work through the fear.
That is what we do in the Scary Goals Club. So come on in, come join, hit subscribe, and let's get started.
Hi and wel I'm gonna redo that. Hi and welcome to episode six of the Scary goals podcast. Today [00:01:00] we are diving into the one thing, like if you do nothing else, if you take nothing else from anything I've said in this entire podcast, And I'm saying that even everything I've said up until now, and in the future, and you just use this one thing, literally, it's going to change everything for you.
Okay. And before we get into that, I just want to give you a wee update on how I'm doing in terms of moving towards my scary goal, and then we're going to dive in. So last night I was trying to look about the podcast and I was like, Doesn't feel that scary anymore. It's feels a lot less scary. Obviously the first one was really scary and I had a lot of fear and I almost didn't publish it.
And now, like, I'm really getting into the groove of it. There is still fear that comes up, but this is the amazing thing. When we have a goal that we set that feels really scary and we start taking action towards that. We are proving to ourselves, to our body, our nervous system, that's like, if you do this [00:02:00] thing people are going to judge you and you're going to be separated from the tribe and you're going to die.
We're proving to ourselves, wait, actually, Okay. I did press publish. People listened to it. People commented. I'm still here. Like I'm still alive. Everything's okay. And so gradually just by taking this action and continuing to show up, you're proving to yourself that it's safe to do this. It's safe to put yourself out there, to show up in a bigger way, to actually something I've not really been doing.
It's an honest confession. I was going to say to put yourself on video. I am recording this on video and I've only uploaded, so this is episode six, so there's five episodes out in the world. I've only uploaded one of them for YouTube and I can give all the excuses of, Oh, I don't have time to go through it and the internet speed was a bit slow, so it took too long to upload.
If I really wanted those, those uploaded, like I would have done it. And ultimately I do like, I want to get this work. Further out into the world, but that is [00:03:00] what still feels quite scary at the moment. So even like recording this now and putting it out in audio and people listening to it on Spotify or whatever, that feels okay.
Like I'm kind of got into the swing of that. So YouTube is my next. Um, like the way I think about it, I'm like, what am I avoiding doing that? I know that there's a bit of fear there and then I just lean in towards that because I know that the more I'm leaning towards that, the less scary it gets. It's always, always scary the first time.
Think back to anything that you've ever done in your business. Like . The first time you posted something or made an offer or put a proposal together or whatever, whatever that is for you, the first time always will have felt really scary. You have to generate a lot of courage to go and do the thing and then it just gets easier and it becomes just part of what you're doing.
So the more that you are going to And maybe you're finding this already as you're working towards your scary goal, the more you're taking this action, the less scary it feels, and then you can lean into the next scary action and the next scary action so that [00:04:00] you're continuing to grow, continuing to grow.
And then you look back and be like, wow.
So even within your goal, there's different ways that you can kind of lean into and be like, okay, this now feels scary. Another thing that still feels kind of scary. It's scary for me as being more vulnerable and I'm trying to be as open as I can and as honest as I can about what's working, where my brain's going, things that are not going right, things that I'm figuring out as I go, but there's definitely,, some things I will chat about in future podcast episodes that are helpful and that are relevant, but I know that being more vulnerable and a bit more honest, that's something that is going to be my area of growth because that feels scary.
It's like. really being and letting parts of you that. You're not such a fan of be open and other people to, to see that as well still feels quite scary. So I'm on a journey even within these 30 podcast episodes, there's so much. It's not just like rinse and repeat, go, go, go. There's so much nuance and ways that I can lean into [00:05:00] it more and areas for my own growth.
So think about what that is for you and your goal as you're working towards it. When the action stops feeling scary. What are you avoiding and what still feels scary and lean into that and just know that the process is the same. The more that you practice, the more that you get used to being okay with that fear, still doing it anyway, telling your brain, huh, I'm showing your brain.
I am not dead. I didn't die. Everything's okay. The easier is to then keep going and leaning into kind of what feels uncomfortable.
So that's my little update for today. Okay. So today's episode, we are diving into this one thing that is going to completely shift how you are showing up for your goals and how they feel as well.
It's going to make your goals feel so fun. The one thing, like again, if you do nothing else is this. It is to find every single tiny, teeny tiny scrap of evidence that you are making progress. Every bit of evidence that it is working. [00:06:00] That you are moving towards your goal. Okay, now I know that sounds so simple and I'm going to break down some examples of how I figured this out, how I've used it and explain why it works and what our brain does on default normally and then I'm going to give you at the end a practice that you can go through to test this out and try this out for yourself and you will see what a difference it makes.
Where our brain goes to as default is to focus on. So we have our goal, right? It will automatically go to Where we are now, here's the goal, everything we haven't done, everything that we still have to do, how we're not there yet, how it's going to be too much, how we won't be able to do it. Like it's focused on that gap between where we are and where it is that we want to be.
That's where we'll go on default. Our brain has a negativity bias. It's going to be focusing on what we don't yet have. It's just wired to do that to keep us safe. So it's completely normal. It's like [00:07:00] even very specific example. So a couple of weeks ago, I. Recorded two podcast episodes and then last week I had mastitis, which is my seventh time of having mastitis.
It's not much fun. It's quite sore. It's basically an infected boob. I didn't know what it was before I had a kid. Now I definitely know what it was. So I've been feeling quite poorly on antibiotics, just like completely wiped. And so I was editing the like doing like the minimum work, just like editing a bit of the podcast.
I could get it out even though I'd recorded it the week before. And as I was going through and editing it. My brain kept going to like, Oh, well you missed that. Oh, you didn't talk about that. You didn't really explain that thing. All it could, all it could focus on was the bits I didn't do. Cause I had a bit of an idea in my head, like, okay, this is how the episode is going to go.
I'd like written out a few like notes and bullets, but then I don't want to read off my notes. So I'm doing this just. basically from memory and [00:08:00] whatever comes up in the moment. And so my brain was like, didn't do this, didn't do this, didn't do this. To the point that I, I managed to edit it all, had it ready to go.
And I was like, I'm not going to publish this. Like this isn't the episode I had in my mind of everything that I wanted to include. And so I sat with a discomfort and was just like, no, her in perfect action. You're publishing it. I'm making a rule to myself that, you know, once I have recorded something like it's going to go right into the world, mostly we'll see. And when I start being more vulnerable, I'll be like, Oh, I don't want to do it.
I was like, no, put it out into the world. And even when it went live, I was like, I can't listen to it. I can't listen to it back. And then I was like, no, go and listen to it. Someone reached out and was like, Oh, I really liked this episode.
You explained everything so clearly. And I was like, ha. And what I had been missing was how, what I had actually done. My brain was like, well, you didn't do this, didn't do this, didn't do this. But what I had done. And what was in the episode [00:09:00] was useful to someone. It was helpful to someone.
Our brain will default to like, yeah, but, but you didn't do these things and actually discount what we have and what we have already done and like how amazing it is that we've recorded this and it's in the world and something in it somewhere will resonate with someone. So cool.
Watch if your brain is doing that as well. Okay. It's completely normal. All of our brains do it and it's just, it just can feel very heavy when we have this idea of where we're going. This was just a tiny example from one podcast episode.
I had an idea of what I wanted the goal to be for the episode. And it wasn't quite that. And it was just like, I shut down. I was like, Oh, I don't want to post it. You know, just like so much self doubt rather than like, actually what is already there is amazing. When we have our bigger goal that we're working towards, it's so easy to get caught up in this and it just feels heavy.
We don't want to take action. We don't want to show up. We definitely don't want to be putting ourselves out there when it's like, oh, well, we have so far to go.
The first time that [00:10:00] I really discovered this, and I think I must've used it in, ultra marathons, At some point, I can't remember a specific example, but I definitely remember in 2017 Luke and I attempted a human powered expedition across Alaska, aiming to be the first people to go from the southernmost to northernmost point.
It was going to take us about three months, spoiler alert, we didn't do it. That's for like a future episode. Early on, we just got hit with storms. We were kayaking in Southeast Alaska in the Pacific Ocean. We just got hit with storms and storms and there's massive open water crossings. So like, if you have, if you imagine like a bay goes round rather than going all the way around the bay, which would take a long time, you go from like headland to headland.
So you cross, you do an open water crossing, but you have to have like okay wave conditions or it's just going to be really dangerous. So. We kept getting set back with weather and we were stuck on this island with crazy rain, crazy [00:11:00] storm for like four days. Pup Island. We couldn't go anywhere.
So we just were in this tent. Listening to rain, there's like 2000 inches of rain a year inside East Alaska.
It was wet. We were stuck in this tent and you, of course you have lots of time to think and dwell on how far we still had to go. It just felt so heavy. The thing is, if in my podcast episode or like without publishing that podcast, it's like, Oh, but I missed out these things.
And if I didn't end up publishing it, say. That's kind of okay. Like, yeah, it was goal of bringing podcast out in the world. If I don't do an episode, if I don't do it, nothing's going to happen. When you and your husband are stuck on a tiny island in the Pacific Ocean for four days in a tent at the start, like a week and a bit into your three month expedition, it's really not helpful to have.
Like a mindset and an approach where it just feels really heavy because all you're thinking about is how far you still have to go. It changes the team dynamics. It brings the other person down and [00:12:00] okay, yes. Obviously, life is all up and down and on expedition, it's very much up and down.
Like knowing in those moments, this is not helpful because it shuts down any creativity. It shuts down problem solving of like, okay, what other options do we have? Or like, how could we make it work when it's just like, oh, it's not going to happen. It's not going to happen. We're so far behind.
We're so far behind. We still have all this to go. Like it just doesn't feel fun and it's just not enjoyable and that was part of it was on this expedition. It was. freaking hard, but we also wanted to enjoy the moments as well. And so I remember when we finally set off, I mean, the open water crossing just after this island, celebrating all of the small winds and like breaking it down.
So it's like, okay, we've had our breakfast. Yes. Amazing. We've packed up our bags and our tent. This means we're making progress. The weather has changed. Okay. Yes. It's like celebrating all these things. Even when we were kayaking, we've paddled for an hour. Okay, we've done this. So it's looking at not how far there still is to go off the whole [00:13:00] entire expedition and shutting down, but being like, yes, we're making progress. Oh, we just did that. Now we're having lunch. Now we're paddling some more.
Now we're having a snack. So it's like breaking everything down and just going like all of the small wins along the way. And it just makes it so much easier to keep going. Makes it so much easier to stay in a more helpful mindset and to have the energy to keep showing up when things are hard and when there still maybe is so far to go, but not letting your brain go there.
It's constantly redirecting it back to how far you've come, all the progress you're making .
It's the same with this podcast. I remember after I published the first one, I was like, Oh, three people have listened to it. It's like, Oh my goodness, it's amazing.
Like just celebrating every single, every single bit of evidence that is working, that is happening, that you are making progress. I was like, Oh, wow. Yes. And like, I know maybe years ago I would have thought like, so and dismissed it because it was like, [00:14:00] why would you count that if you don't, you don't have the actual goal, like you don't have, you know, this many episodes and this many people listening to it.
Like our brain always defaults to like, yeah, but what that is, is not enough. And the more that we can say, actually, all of these bits along the way, they are enough. Like three people is enough. Three people is freaking amazing. So good. The easier it is. And then if we celebrate along the way. Not only do we enjoy the journey more and be more present and just be so grateful and knowing that our time is our life.
It's not like things magically change when we get to the goal. It changes along the way. So when we celebrate as we go, when we actually reach our goal, we're also going to celebrate. Whereas What I used to do, and if this resonates, you might do it as well, or used to do it. We get to go and we're just like, okay, cool.
Next, like onto the next thing. It's like, yeah, yeah, yeah, that's fine. But now onto the next thing. It's because we're not used to celebrating. It's not like we suddenly have this goal and then we'll celebrate. It's like, no, you [00:15:00] practice. building the mindset of celebration, the mindset of focusing on like, how amazing this is right now, exactly where I am.
Three people is freaking amazing. And anyone that listens to this or anyone that reaches out, I'm just like, this is like, I'm so excited. I'm so grateful for it. I am just this. I'm like, this is amazing. And it's making the whole process and it's done this for expeditions as well.
So much more enjoyable. I'm so much more present. I'm so much more grounded. I want to keep going.
When we come back to what's working, when we celebrate everything along the way, it's so much easier to feel energized and to take that action in like a completely different way.
Even my son does this, it's so sweet. he's like trying to get up on the sofa and then he gets up. He'll be like, and clap his hands. It's just the best. He just celebrates himself and the progress that he's making.
He doesn't know not to do that. We then learn not to do that as we get through life. He's just like filled with joy and [00:16:00] satisfaction that he's been able to do something that he wasn't able to before. And he persevered and he kept going and he ~like~ claps his hands. You can ~like~ see the joy just like pouring out of him.
He's so chuffed in himself. That he's making the progress and it's the same for us. The more that we can celebrate any bit of progress that we're making, that it's working, that we're making progress, things are happening. It just feels so much easier. It's this ~like~ lightness that we bring to what we're doing, a lightness that we bring to our goal.
It doesn't feel heavy. And so if your goal is feeling really heavy, it's probably because you're thinking about how far you still have to go and that you aren't there yet.
And the practice that I'm going to talk you through, just by doing that, it's going to start rewiring your brain.
It's going to start shifting your brain and looking for all of the ways that things are working and it's just going to help you enjoy it so much more because
how you are being right now. How you are thinking and feeling if you don't change anything will be exactly how you're thinking and feeling when you get to the goal. ~Like~ nothing changes unless you [00:17:00] actively change your brain and think about it in a different way. And so it's building that practice of every single day, focus on what is working focused from all of the evidence that you're making progress, all of the wins celebrating every single win.
I do this with my private clients at the start of every session. We celebrate the wins because we're showing our brain, look. So much progress has been made since last week. You're showing up in a different way. You're being a different person. Things are happening because our brain will just default to what's not and how far we still have to go.
And it's like, Oh, look at all this progress that's being made.
I also want to offer that when you start doing this, it's going to feel really weird at first, especially if you're not used to it. What was really interesting when I started doing it in. Endurance and expeditions in Alaska, it just felt totally normal.
It was like, this helps me get into a better mindset that helps me make better decisions, show up as a better teammate, be a bit more upbeat and lighter. And that's going to help Luke as well. And with Expeditions on my own. It was like, well, no one else is here to save me. It's just me.
Okay. No one else. Like if I just go in a sulk and like [00:18:00] sit in the snow, that's not very helpful. It's like, okay. Using again, those tools to help me move through that when I just felt overwhelmed and like really heavy with the scale of the goal. And so that felt really natural and normal. What felt really weird was actually transferring this into business.
And it was when I first started my coaching business and thinking, I had no evidence that it was going to work, but finding all the progress that I was making and like, anytime the one showed up to a live stream, I did, if there was one person there, like amazing. Or even if no one was there, I'd be like, I did it.
It's working. I'm making progress rather than like, Oh, I'm not here yet. So I managed to redirect my brain onto that, but it did feel a bit weird. I was so used to just being like, Oh, but it's here. I need to get to it. I'm not there yet. In terms of business and ~like~ work on the day to day endurance stuff, it felt easy to start tracking progress or ~like~ at least be able to redirect my brain to that.
So it was only in the last few years that I've actually taken this technique from endurance, from expeditions [00:19:00] into my day to day, my business. And so here is something that you want to be trying. every single day. It could be morning, it could be evening, whatever time of day. Get a piece of paper, ideally writing it down. You could do the notes on your phone. You could speak it out loud, like sometimes if Luke and I are on a walk, I'll be like, okay, I want to do this. But usually it's writing it down, write down what are your three wins it can be anything. But if you're thinking about your scary goal, it can be what are three wins, three bits of progress I've made towards my scary goal. And it can be anything.
Anything. Even. I am writing down a win. I am thinking about my scary goal right now, anything. And it's just retraining your brain to find evidence that it's working and that things are happening.
And if you want to take this even deeper, this is an exercise that we did in my program time for good my year long coaching program. It's got the most amazing purposeful entrepreneurs, business leaders in there, and we've coaching every week. And at the start of the month, we have the scary [00:20:00] goals club call, which was the inspiration for this podcast name.
The first week of every month we meet and it's like diving into our scary goals and then we set a practice or an intention for the month and then we go out and we do those things for scary goals. So February was every day or every few days, whatever you can decide, but I encourage you to try every day writing down at least three wins in terms of relating to your scary goal and that you're taking action and showing up, really sink into that.
So not just writing them down being like, cool, cool, I've done my wins, on to the next thing, but really being there and like almost closing your eyes and being like, wow, like I've done this in the last 24 hours, like three wins. I've done it. I've shown up even when I didn't want to, I've kept going, I've been thinking about it, I've been focusing on it.
Yes, and celebrating, like, all of the bits of progress. And then, once you've sunk into it, thinking, okay, what is my one scary action for the next day? From that place of feeling like things are working, I'm making progress. What is the [00:21:00] one action you wanna take for the next day? And it just gives you that energy and that momentum to want to do the scary thing the next day.
It keeps it front of center on your brain and it really helps you like make progress and move towards your scary goal. And the reason that it works so well, especially when you are writing it down, is that your brain sees it. And it releases dopamine in your brain.
So dopamine is in your transmitter that generates desire to go after goals or to go after something that we want to get. When we see progress, when we are tracking progress, it feels very satisfying to our brain. It feels very rewarding and it makes us want to continue. Doing the thing that's creating the progress.
Okay, so if you're writing down all the things that you're doing, that you're showing up, like all the wins that are happening, all the progress you're making along the way, you feel amazing, you feel motivated, you feel desire to go after your goal. And then it encourages you to want to take more action towards your goal [00:22:00] and move towards it rather than the other way around is just when you're focusing on the goal and getting really overwhelmed, just completely shutting down.
So if you feel yourself shutting down, just come back to, okay, what are the three amazing things that I've done? Like three wins and really sink into that. And it's going to drive that dopamine that will make you want to go after the goal. And dopamine is a mood booster as well, so it's going to help you enjoy the moment even more and enjoy every day as you're going after your goal.
Enjoy the time, even when you're creating the goal. It's all about enjoying the journey. There is zero point in setting goals, hating every second of the way there, and then, like not even being there, hating it, maybe yourself and then going on to the next goal. It's like, that's rubbish. It's just not very helpful.
It's not a good use of your time, your energy, what you're here on this planet to do and this one amazing life that we know we definitely have. So the more that you can enjoy the journey and. To be fair, if I'd called it the easy fun [00:23:00] goals club, it doesn't really have the same ring, right? But by doing this practice, by celebrating your wins, and again, if you want to take it further than deciding a scary action, you're going to do the next day of doing it.
It just will help it feel so much lighter, so much more fun, so much more enjoyable and satisfying because you're showing your brain, look, I'm making all this amazing progress and you'll want to keep going.
Coming back to celebrating what's working and really sinking into that. It's going to help you just have so much appreciation for where you are now in your journey, for who you have become, and how you were different from even how you were yesterday or like a few moments ago, and just Enjoy it so much more because this is your life.
You may as well have fun. You may as well enjoy the process or what is the point? That's what I think. Anyway, I have had so many goals where they've just felt too heavy and I've beat myself up and it's not fun and I'm not, don't do that anymore. Like it has to feel fun. It can feel scary. [00:24:00] Yes, but by doing this and focusing on what's working and celebrating every tiny little scrap of evidence along the way, it will feel fun.
And so your scary goals will become fun goals. You'll be like, I'm doing something so scary and it feels so fun. That's when it feels like you can tap into just that energy of feeling alive and like a human that's like tapping into all this, like these raw feelings of like fear, but also fun and being so proud of yourself.
This practice will shift that for you. So again, as I said at the start of the podcast, if you do nothing else or take nothing else from any of these podcasts, this one literally will change everything for you. So keep redirecting your brain, focus on what's working, celebrating all the wins along the way, every single tiny one, even though it feels weird at first, do as my son does and like clap your hands, right?
It is going to change everything. Thank you so much for listening. And I just want to offer I'm going to do a Q& A.
I've had a few questions come in, which is awesome. I love hearing about your scary goals and [00:25:00] having your questions. So if you have any question you want me to answer, Anything about scary goals, anything I've said in the previous podcast episodes, anything you want me to do a future episode on, I think on Spotify, you can ask a question or message me on Instagram at I am Hazel Robertson with any question you have.
And I'm going to be doing like a Q and a episode answering all your questions and giving some things that you can try and some extra things to think about. So any questions you have, this is your chance to get them over to me and I'm going to get them answered in a future episode. And I hope you have an amazing rest of the day and amazing.
Rest of the week and I'll see you next week.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If this was helpful, please hit subscribe and leave a review. This helps get this work in the hands of more purposeful people. That is more people creating bigger, scarier goals, making an even bigger impact in the world. And if you want to take this work deeper and work with me directly, head to the show note and I put all of the information there.
If you've got any questions or if there's anything you're like, ooh, I'd love you to talk about that on the pod, [00:26:00] please just get in touch. I love hearing from you guys. And I'll see you next time in the Scary Goals Club.
