08 But I've never done it before!
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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 welcome to episode eight. I think it's episode eight. It's not. No, it is. Okay. Hi and welcome to episode [00:01:00] eight of the Scary Goals Club podcast. Today we are diving into, but what if I've not done it before? I've never done it before. I've never done anything like my goal before. What do I do? If your brain is offering you that, I'm going to talk through some ways to move through it, including something I call possibility evidence, finding all of the evidence that it could be possible.
So that's what we're diving into today. And I'm trying to think of any update I've got for you. I've recorded this on the same day as another podcast because I have a workshop next week. So there's not that much update apart from,
If you're watching this on video, I've adjusted the background a little bit. But I think, so the workspace, the room, the paint in here is this like, it's kind of like a magnolia color, like a creamy kind of color, but watching it back on video, literally my hair and my face looks like the same color as the background.
It's all this like kind of beigey blondie creamy [00:02:00] color. So I think I'm going to get some pictures for the wall and try and just make it a little bit more of an interesting background. But if you're listening to this on audio, then this means nothing to you. Go and watch it on video. I am in the process of exporting the videos and I'm going to get them uploaded onto YouTube today. Leaning into that scary action, taking the scary action.
Getting myself out on YouTube where anyone can comment is sometimes it somehow feels more scary. I'm sure there's those of you that have used YouTube before. I don't really use YouTube that much apart from sometimes actually with recording this podcast, like how to do certain things, how to edit, how to put different bits together.
That's been really helpful to how to, and sometimes for yoga with Adrian, because she's amazing. I use YouTube for that, but other than that, I don't really use it that much. So it feels like I'm putting stuff out there and then I don't know, I'm like, I don't really feel like I've got a feel for like a community or what it's like there, whereas.
Instagram is my kind of go to, and then I do a little bit on LinkedIn as well. So if you're on YouTube, please follow, go and find it [00:03:00] and watch and share and like, that would be awesome and say hi as well. So today we are going to dive into when your brain is like, but I've never done it before. It's totally normal.
Okay. I think I start most of these podcast episodes being like, if you're doing this thing, it is normal. It is normal. If your brain's like, I've not done it before. Of course, it's going to be offering you that because our brain is scared of change. It's scared of us doing new things, scared of us putting ourselves out there like on YouTube for me, where someone could comment or you don't see it or someone could say things and it's like.
It feels really, really scary to our brain. So anything that's different, anything that's unknown, anytime we are doing something new, our brain's like, you've not done it before. Think of all these things that could go wrong and it will go to the worst case. It will give you all of the evidence that it's not going to work because the way our brain works out what might happen is it goes to the past.
So it's like, well, this didn't work at that time and it will find all of the [00:04:00] evidence for like, well, you've done these things, but you've not done that. And it thinks that it can predict our future. Brain is very convincing. Our survival part of our brain, right? Like ultimately you want to do your scary goal, but the survival part of your brain is like, ah, no, you've not done it before.
It's unknown. Something might happen. Something will go wrong. It will be feeding you all of these limiting beliefs and these beliefs.
I just want to offer, yeah, okay, so you've not done something before. It doesn't mean you cannot do it. And what I'm going to talk through today is how to find all the evidence that it is going to be more possible.
So there's two bits I'm going to dive into. First is anything that has happened in your past has no bearing on your future. Okay? Whatever the situation is, your upbringing, your past, anything that's happened even up to this very moment has nothing to do with what is actually possible for you, what you could [00:05:00] create, what your life could be like, unless you decide that you want to make it part of it.
Based on how you are thinking about it, based on the story that your brain is telling about your past, about events that have happened. Because what you are doing, how you're showing up and therefore whether you're going to create your scary goal or not is based on how you're thinking and feeling. So if you are believing your brain when it's like, it will never work, I've never done it before.
You're probably not going to be feeling very motivated. You're not going to be taking action. You're less likely to make your goal happen. But just knowing that, just because you've never done something before, just because anything has happened in your past, that is like the situation, the circumstance that is just how things are, how you think about that, the story you tell about it.
And you can tell any story you want. You can tell a story that's going to empower you and serve you and be like, okay, this is what it is. How do I want to take that and use that as fuel? Or how do I want to think about it now? How do I want to be, you are always in control of [00:06:00] your response.
And then any moment you can decide, okay, this is how I want to do things differently in the future. Any moment can be a reset. Spoke about this in a previous episode, like in any moment you can start again, there is the situation. However, Frustrating, annoying, not where you want it to be is and like, including your past.
And I'm not dismissing anything that has happened to you in your past, but just knowing that you are in control of your future. You can create whatever you want to create just by deciding that you are. And, and. Like continuing to show up and keep going. And when we get stuck in the past and using like, Oh, but it means I can't do this.
And this thing happened when our brain will want to go and find all the evidence that it's not going to happen for us. We just direct it to all the reasons that it is going to happen for us. Okay, so firstly your past has zero zero bearing on your future unless you decide to make it like whatever you created in the past if you've maybe [00:07:00] gone after goals before and you've not created them maybe there's a fear of going after goals now the reason you didn't create those goals there'll have been some past thinking that was happening like you were thinking and feeling a different way maybe not taking action not really going after it or whatever life circumstances happened that was in the past where you are today This is completely different.
This is like a new moment in time, a new you, how you are thinking and feeling about your goal, about yourself, about whatever's happened in this moment is going to drive what is possible for you in the future. So your past has nothing to do with it. So if you find you've been going to the past, bring it back to like, okay, this is where I am now and now this is where we're going.
All that being said, sometimes it can be really helpful when we are doing something we've never done before. And if you're doing something that you have done before, it's probably not going to feel that scary. So it's not going to be a scary goal. So just by the nature of setting a scary goal, it's probably going to be something you've not done before.[00:08:00]
So even just by setting a goal of something you haven't done before, sometimes it can feel like from where you are now to the goal as being quite a big jump, especially if you've got a goal that's maybe like a year away or like a couple of years, like some of these bigger life goals. It can feel like a bit of a jump if you've never done it before and your brain will be like, yeah, but this didn't happen.
Remember that time you tried the thing that didn't work that. So it's not going to happen this time. It will find all of that because it's again, it's a scared brain. It's trying to keep you from taking action towards the scary goal, and putting yourself out there and risking failure and rejection.
So just know it's going to try and do that. What we can do instead is find what I call possibility evidence. Okay. So. This is all of the evidence that actually it could be possible. Okay, you've not done it before, but what are those other things that you have done and even how you are that you can help to build a bit of an evidence bank to be like, okay, Actually, this maybe could be possible.
And the [00:09:00] more that we can like get these little seedlings of possibility and belief, and we can kind of feed evidence into them, it's going to help you show up, take action, move towards your scary goal. And then you're creating more evidence that helps propel you along. So it's creating the evidence to get you started.
And then once you start taking action, you're building more and more evidence that you're moving towards it. Especially if you are celebrating the wins along the way, you're feeding your brain the information and the evidence as you go.
I'll give you two examples of how this has worked for me. The first one is from an expedition I did in 2020. So literally just before COVID it was wild, but it was my scary goal for the year and I was up in Southwest Norway. So there's a high mountain plateau, I think it's the largest high mountain plateau in Europe, something like that.
It's called the Hardanger Plateau or Hardangervidda in Norwegian. I was up there for, An expedition skills training camp. And then I did a solo crossing across Hardangervidda. So in winter, so like, [00:10:00] well, February, March time. And I even remember the distance. I probably should have got all this information to do this podcast episode.
I think it was about 130 kilometers. I think you can do it in like five or six days. I think if conditions are good, it was really, really good. Like a lot of heavy snow. Anyway, we won't even get onto that. It took me a lot longer. But when I was thinking about doing this expedition, I had never done it before.
I'd never done a solo. I'd never been on like an expedition for that long on my own. I'd never been in that part of the world before. All of these reasons could have been like, well, I've never done it before. And it was very easy for my brain to go there. What I did instead was like, okay, what is all the possibility evidence, all the evidence I can find from my past.
And okay, it has no bearing on my future, but even just using it to be useful, like find all the evidence that it could be possible. And so it was like, well, [00:11:00] okay, I have skied since I was four years old. I can ski, I can hold my own on skis. That's fine. I have skied with Luke , we were way up in Northern Norway, up in Sapmi, up in the Arctic for a month the year before.
With skis, with pulks, winter camping, self supported in between the towns. So it was like, okay, well I've been on an expedition with Luke doing this. Okay, maybe I haven't done this on my own, but I have, you know, we've got into the systems. I'd just been on a two week expedition training camp where again, I'd been really nailing my systems for setting up the tent, taking down the tent, cooking.
like taking care of myself. All of the stuff that's really important because when you're skiing and it's knackering and you get in and it's dark and it's like minus 15 at night in the tent, like you're so tired and you have to have your systems really dialed so that everything is just second nature. It doesn't take you long to think about it. Your systems can be really slick. So it's safe. And also, so you're not [00:12:00] using all this extra and a cognitive energy thinking like, what am I doing next?
It's just, you're really in the rhythm of that. It makes it so much easier to not forget something or spill water somewhere or knock over your stove or whatever the thing is. So it's like. about safety and also about efficiency and effectiveness as well. So you can get in your sleeping bag as early as you can and rest and then get up and do the same again the next day.
So I was like, okay, I've got all these systems. I'm learning all that. I had been out, like spent many, many hours and days, like in the mountains, including in winter, including by myself, I'd done an overnight winter camp myself, finding all of this evidence of things that I had done in the past. And it was like, okay, maybe it's not such a big jump.
And my brain still kept going to like, yes, but this, and you've not done it on your own. And you're responsible for all the decisions and you don't have anyone to bounce ideas off of. And you can't just leave at any point, like in the middle of this plateau, it's easy to go there and how it can be possible.
And it's bringing it back to like, no, I [00:13:00] can figure things out. Like I know how to navigate. I know how to use my equipment. I know how to use a map. I know how to make decisions and slow things down. And it's just bringing your brain back to not even the things that you've done, but how you can figure things out.
Even that I was like, I have so much evidence in my past that I can figure things out. I can make good decisions when I'm outside, when I'm on my own, I can be responsible for that. There was still a little bit of like, will I be able to make decisions in the winter environment, like in the mountains on skis when I'm like really knackered.
Sure. Maybe I didn't have that evidence, but it was like, no, I have made decisions on expeditions in the past. I have been able to keep going. Even when I'm tired, I've been able to make sensible decisions about where to camp. Like I, I know that I can do that.
And it's the same even with this podcast. It was very easy to be like, I've not done it before. I've never done a podcast. I don't know how to. Edit things. I don't know how to do that. All of that came up for me for sure when I set this scary goal, but it was bringing my brain back to, [00:14:00] okay, I have stood up and recorded on video ever since I started my coaching practice.
Whether it was on Instagram or into my phone, I've recorded videos. I have all video series for my clients . Like I've stood up and explained these ideas and these concepts again and again and again. I can do that. I can do that. I can just.
Press publish. It's like I can, I've figured out how to build a website before I figured out how to Do various tech things before, I can figure all these things out and just coming back to that. Like that's been a really helpful thought for me is I can figure this out and as soon as you know, it's easy to be like, oh, I don't know how to do this.
I've never done it before. That just shuts down any creativity for actually being able to figure out what to do. So if your brain's doing this, a really helpful reframe and reshift is. I can figure it out. So finding all the evidence that it could be possible from what you've done in the past and then being like, I can totally figure it out.
I figure things out. This is just what I do. And it's the same. [00:15:00] I Googled how to start a podcast and read a few articles and put together a bit of a workflow and got some information on YouTube for how to edit and was like, Oh, this is the software to use. And I asked some friends who had podcast what were some of their tips and I got all this together.
And then. started and was like, I can totally figure this out. And I could. Okay. The first podcast took, I think it was like a whole day. I don't even know how much for like planning or thinking about it. Anyway, it took me a whole day to record it, make the intro outro, put it all together, like do all that, go through it, actually publish it.
More than a day, even up into that evening. And then now it can just be a few hours and it's going to get shorter and shorter unless I end up speaking for longer and longer, so we'll see. So think about what that is for you, like, for example, if you want to publish a book. Maybe you've written blogs for years.
Maybe writing comes really naturally. You quite like writing and it's what you do in your day to day and it's maybe not such a big jump. Maybe you want to do a podcast and actually part of your role [00:16:00] in your day to day is speaking to people or interviewing people or having discussions with people and conversations.
That can just happen on a podcast. It's like, Like, it helps your brain see it as less of a jump, or maybe you've already written a book and you're trying to find a publisher and okay, it's like, you've not done that before, but maybe you've published a paper before. Maybe you know that you are resilient, that you will keep applying, even if you get setbacks, that you're still committed to making it happen.
You know, you'll keep going. Even if you have rejection, rejection, rejection letters, you know, you have that resilience. You want that book published so much. You're going to keep going even when it feels really hard. So even it's like, there's the evidence of things you've done, like activities or goals that you've gotten and created before.
And there's also who you are as a person. And just knowing that when you set your mind to something that you will keep going, use that as evidence. All of this is possibility evidence that you can feed to your brain to help it shift from I've never done this [00:17:00] before to, Oh, actually this could be possible.
At least I'm going to figure it out. And when you're in that place of, I'll figure out it could be possible. It just feels lighter. It's so much easier and simpler. to test things out and keep showing up and keep taking action rather than like, oh, I've never done it before. And it just completely shuts down anything and you'll stay where you are, which your brain's like, yes, you are staying where you are.
I don't have to risk rejection and failure and people saying things. Trying and failing and not getting the result I want and being disappointed. It's like, yes, I don't have to risk any of that because I just get to stay where I am. That's what your survival brain wants. Okay. So if it's going to like, I've never done this before, just know that that is just a safety mechanism, bringing it back to like, okay, but I've done all these other things.
I know that I can figure it out. So coming back to that, ~I hope that was helpful.~
I hope you have an amazing rest of the day and an amazing week and I'll catch you next week. Bye.
Hey, thanks so much for listening. If this was helpful, please hit subscribe and leave a [00:18:00] 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, please just get in touch. I love hearing from you guys. And I'll see you next time in the Scary Ghouls Club.
