198. Leveraging Your Future Self to Achieve Impossible Goals

I’m Jody Moore and this is Better Than Happy, episode 198, Leveraging Your Future Self to Achieve Impossible Goals.

This podcast is for people who know that living an extraordinary life is not easy or comfortable. It’s so much better than that. This is Better Than Happy, and I’m your host, Jody Moore.

Hey you guys, welcome to the podcast today and thank you so much for tuning in. I’m excited to talk to you about leveraging your future self to achieve impossible goals. I want to start out, for those of you who may be new to the podcast, and just introduce you briefly to myself.

I am best known for this podcast. Sometimes I’m out in public and people recognize me. Not all the time, but especially if I’m in a place where there’s a highly concentrated population of members of the church, then I get recognized. It’s very strange, I’ll be honest. Strange for my kids especially. They’re like, what is going on?

But anyway, I’m recognized and I’m most well known for this podcast that has several million downloads and I’m just so grateful for that. I’m also pretty well known for my coaching practice, which is the reason I publish this podcast, by the way. It’s a supplement to the coaching practice and it’s my way of getting my work and my tools out into the world into anybody who wants to utilize them.

I’ve created a really thriving, successful coaching practice and I’ve done some things that I would have believed just a few years ago were impossible. But here’s who I really am. I’m a stay-at-home mom. In my head, I’m a stay-at-home mom. I don’t have a job that I have to get up and get dressed for and report to by any certain time.

I have this business that I do get up and do that for, but I’m just at home in my office with my laptop doing what I do, helping people in the world, and that’s pretty fun. The truth is I have no business doing what I’ve done. I have no business setting the goals that I’ve set for my future even, if you think about it.

I’m just a simple mom. I’m a mess in so many ways. My house is usually a mess, I get frustrated and irritated with my children. I’m like, just a normal person. I’m not a unicorn. I have goals that people would say are just not very realistic. They’re impossible even, and the truth is I’m all in on all of them most of the time.

Because I’ve acquired the skill of setting and achieving impossible goals, and today, I’m going to teach you that skill. Now, before we dive into learning how to do that, it’s really important that we pause and just briefly consider why.

Why do we need to set and achieve impossible goals? I mean, shouldn’t we just be content with what we have? Isn’t enough enough? I mean, I make really good money in my current business. Why do I need to grow the business? Why do I need to set bigger goals?

So let’s talk about why. There can be all kinds of reasons why. I’m going to give you just a few possible reasons to consider, but you can certainly have your own reasons. So maybe you do want to make a whole bunch of money. Maybe your goal is tied to making money. I do not think there is anything wrong with that reason.

I think that more money equals more freedom. More money allows you to extend yourself. More money just makes you more of who you already are. So having more money, not a bad reason to set or achieve a goal.

Another reason might be to show yourself what you’re capable of. Notice I say show yourself what you’re capable of. I don’t recommend that you make your reason around showing other people what you’re capable of because that’s just a race that you’ll likely never win. There will always be some people who will disapprove of you.

There will be people that will judge you no matter what. If you set a goal and you don’t achieve it or it’s a small goal, some people will judge you for not having achieved your goal. But if you set a goal and you do achieve it, some people will judge you for not having your priorities straight.

So I don’t recommend that you ever do it to try to control what other people think, but maybe you just want to show yourself what you’re capable of. I like to challenge myself in that way. I like to say, “Hey Jody, I bet you can’t do this,” and answer myself with, “Oh yeah? Just watch me.” That’s kind of fun.

Another reason to set and chase an impossible goal is just because we can, because we have so much knowledge and information and tools and resources, and I think about all the people who have come before us who have achieved and learned so much and then passed along that information to us, and I sort of feel like it’s upon us to build on that and contribute to the generation to come.

Maybe, to kind of piggyback off of that, you have something that you want to contribute in the world. You want to show up in your life in a way that says hey, I’m here and I want to play this game and I want to contribute to this game. I want to leave this world a better place than I found it. It’s a great reason to set an impossible goal.

Maybe you want to wear yourself out in this lifetime doing good. You want to look back and know that you really gave it your all and you want to be exhausted from doing good in the world. All great reasons to set and seek towards achieving impossible goals.

But my most favorite reason, and those of you in Be Bold know and some of you listening to this podcast know that my most favorite reason to set and achieve impossible goals is just because it’s fun. Because it’s fun.

It’s fun to set a big goal that your brain isn’t sure it can accomplish, that everybody outside of you thinks, “Oh, that’s so cute that she’s going to try to do that. She’ll never get there,” and then to just blow yourself away with the results that you are able to create. It’s just so darn much fun to do it.

And so I am all in for doing it over and over again. Now, notice that what is not included in this list of reasons is that you need to set and achieve impossible goals in order to prove your worth. You don’t need to earn the right to be here. You have the right to life and to the space you’re taking up on this earth just because you’re a human being. You have nothing to prove or nothing to earn.

But if you choose to do it because it will make you a different person, great. But not because it will make you better or more valuable in some way. Not because then you’ll feel better about yourself. Show yourself what you’re capable of, already knowing that you’re amazing. Not because then you will give yourself permission to believe you are amazing. That’s when we start getting into trouble.

You with me? Okay now, I got to fill you in on a little truth here. A little secret in case you didn’t know this. Most people will not achieve impossible goals in their lifetime. Most people just won’t, and that’s okay. Most people will never even set impossible goals to begin with, but even of the ones that do, the majority of them will never achieve them.

And again, I don’t say that with any judgment. It’s just the truth. So today, we’re going to talk about the reasons why. I have seven reasons I want to share with you as to why most people never achieve impossible goals and then we’re going to dive into each reason in depth and talk about those reasons so that if you are the kind of person who wants to achieve impossible goals, you can make that happen for yourself.

So here are the reasons. Number one, the goal is impossible. Number two, they’re not willing to fail. Number three, they’re not willing to be uncomfortable. Number four, they think it’s just too hard. Number five, they think they need to know how. Number six, they aren’t believing hard enough, and number seven, they’re past-focused instead of future-focused.

Now again, I’m going to go through each of these in detail so if you didn’t get them all written down yet, that’s okay. Stay with me. Before we dive into each reason, I need to make sure and teach you a little something about the human brain.

The human brain is a very complicated organ and I’m not going to go into detail on all the complication of it today. What I want you to understand for the purposes of this podcast is that there are two parts of your brain that have a voice in your head. We have this lower brain or the primitive brain or the survival part of the brain.

Sometimes we call this the reptilian brain. This is the animal brain. It has all kinds of names. I’m typically going to refer to it as the lower brain. It’s the part of the brain that is designed to keep us alive. It’s a very important part of the brain. We want to have this part of the brain saying that’s dangerous, let’s avoid that, that’s pleasurable, let’s go towards that.

It cares only about our survival. Now, this part of the brain is very toddler like in its thoughts. This part of the brain only cares about what is immediately pleasurable or painful. It’s very much like a toddler in that it has a fit when it doesn’t get its way. It thinks that things should always be fair. Some of its thoughts are illogical and then we have this second part of the brain, this more adult, more mature human part of the brain.

This is the cerebral cortex or what I call the higher brain, the thinking brain. This is the part of your brain that knows that we need to consider long-term effects of things. This part of the brain makes really wise, conscious decisions for you. And this part of the brain tempers many times that lower part of the brain when necessary.

So having the two parts work in conjunction is really brilliant and it serves us really, really well. But we need to be aware of the lower brain, we need to be able to monitor the lower brain and to answer the lower brain with the higher brain if we’re going to achieve impossible goals.

Many people don’t notice their thoughts in this way. They’re not able to step back and notice oh, that’s just my lower brain, my primitive brain telling me something that is illogical and not serving me, and I don’t have to just operate at the effect of that lower brain. I can use this higher adult part of my brain to make decisions that will serve me best in the long run.

So that’s what we’re going to examine as we go through these seven reasons why most people don’t achieve impossible goals and how you don’t have to be one of those people. You can be one of the few that actually do achieve amazing things in your life. You ready?

Alright, so number one was the goal is impossible. When I talk to people about setting impossible goals, they’ll say, “Well, why wouldn’t we just want to set a really realistic goal?” And I purposely like to label my goals impossible because otherwise, I set really tiny small goals that help me to stay safe. Because if I set a big goal, my brain is almost always going to say to me at least initially, “That’s impossible. You’ll never be able to do that.”

So if we just label it as an impossible goal, then we can answer the brain with okay, so maybe it is. Let’s just call it impossible. Now, people that don’t achieve impossible goals, their lower brain says, “Why try if it’s impossible?” and then their higher brain answers with, “You’re right, what was I thinking? We should just move on. We shouldn’t even try because it’s impossible.”

But if you want to be the kind of person who does achieve impossible goals, you have to be willing to answer that lower brain with, “I know, but what if we’re wrong? What if it is possible? And what if at least getting close to that big goal is going to get me so much further in my life than coming right in the mark on a really small goal that I’m capable of way more.”

So this is why we call it an impossible goal because you can just allow your brain to say it’s impossible, you can say, “I know, but what if it’s not impossible? What if it actually is possible?” Some of the ways I play with this in my head is I ask myself, has anybody else ever done this before?

And so far, I’ve yet to set a goal that nobody else has ever done. Even my big goals that push me, that feel impossible are not things that nobody’s ever done. Creating a five million dollar business, a 20 million dollar business even, people have done that before, right?

Now, my brain will say, “But I’ve never done it so it’s impossible for me,” but notice how I’m just starting to stretch my mind a little bit. I’m just starting to question like, okay but has a woman with a laptop and four kids ever created a 20 million dollar business before? Yeah, I think so.

So maybe it is possible. And then again, my brain will want to flip back to like, “But not for me. I’m not that kind of person.” So I just allow it to call it impossible but I start to open my mind up to the idea that it could be possible. That’s the difference between someone that never achieves impossible goals and someone that does.

If it is possible, you’re willing to keep moving forward. Let’s talk about number two. The number two reason that people don’t achieve impossible goals is that they’re not willing to fail. So the lower brain will say, “But we could fail. That would be terrible. That would be so embarrassing. That would be so disappointing, we would feel horrible if we failed and everyone would see and why would we want to humiliate ourselves that way?”

Anybody ever have that thought? Yeah, so for people who don’t move forward to achieve impossible goals, they have those thoughts and then they answer them with, “Yeah, you’re right, let’s just turn back now.” But if you want to be the kind of person that achieves impossible goals, you have to notice that you’re still going to have those thoughts.

Your lower brain is still going to say hey, we could fail and that would be terrible and embarrassing, and then answer it with something like, “Well, I think I’d rather try and fail than fail ahead of time.” Because that’s what we’re really doing in the end, right? We’re saying hey, if I go out and I try to lose 20 pounds and I fail at it, then I’m going to feel mortified and disappointed and maybe I’m going to be embarrassed if I told people about it and so we just shouldn’t try and we for sure shouldn’t lose 20 pounds.

We’re just going to fail ahead of time. If my kid says, “Hey mom, I really want to try out for the basketball team but I’m afraid I won’t make it, so I think I’m not going to try out because I don’t think my odds of making it are very good,” and then the child ensures that they don’t make it on the basketball team because they don’t even try out.

Do you see how illogical this lower part of the brain is sometimes? Let’s not try because we might fail and then we’ll for sure fail. So you have to be willing to answer your brain with like, “Listen, I’d much rather look back and say yeah, I failed at that but at least I tried. At least I showed up, at least I put myself out there and in the process of doing that I learned something. And if I don’t want to feel disappointed and beat myself up on it about it on the other side, that’s always optional, so I can choose not to do that if I choose. I can choose to just be proud of myself for trying.”

See what I’m saying? The more willing you are to fail, you guys, the more success you will have in your life. The more willing you are to fail in front of people, even more success you will have in your life.

Alright, number three. The number three reason is that people are not willing to be uncomfortable. So I think that there’s this misconception we have that when we’re pursuing our goals and when we’re on the pathway to our dreams, that it will feel amazing and good. And I have found that that is not the case, at least not all the time.

Much of the time in fact, there are things that I’ve got to do to make my goals happen that I don’t feel like doing, and that is my toddler brain. That is my primitive brain. Remember, the toddler only cares about what’s happening right now in the moment, and that part of my brain says, “But I don’t feel like it.”

And if I just reply with, “Good point, let’s do something else instead because we don’t feel like it,” then I’m probably going to be one of those people who never achieves impossible goals and that is an option. But another option is to reply to your brain with, “Listen, you don’t have to feel like it, just do it anyway.”

This is a thought that I tell myself all the time because I have a very strong primitive, toddler brain. And it very often says, “But I don’t feel like doing that, I don’t want to do it, it doesn’t sound fun, it sounds hard.” All of those things my brain tells me.

I think some of you listen to me and you hear this edited podcast that’s all cleaned up and you see me when I’m at my best, and I don’t know how many times I can tell you that I genuinely have a really strong toddler brain that complains and whines and has tantrums and doesn’t want to do the things that I know I need to do to achieve my goals.

And what I tell myself is you don’t have to feel like it, you’re just going to do it anyway. And as I’ve gotten better and better at doing things that I don’t feel like doing, I’ve created some pretty amazing results in my life and you can do it too, my friend. I promise you, if I can do it, you can do it.

Alright, number four. We think it’s too hard. This is the number four reason why people don’t achieve impossible goals. They’re like, “Yeah, but it’s just really hard.” You guys ever hear your brain saying that? I hear mine say it all the time. I hear you guys say it when I’m coaching you too.

I’m trying to do this thing but it’s just really hard. So it’s really hard, first of all, is just a thought. It’s not a true fact. It’s an optional thought, as all of these are, by the way, but this one especially people think it’s just true. It just is hard. And all of their friends around them validate it. They say yeah, it is really hard.

And if you just allow that toddler brain to tell you that and you reply with yeah, that’s true, I give up, then you’re likely not going to achieve impossible goals, but you have the option to reply with something else instead. One of my most favorite thoughts when my brain says it’s really hard is so what that it’s hard?

Many of you have that thought that’s so popular today that is also a really good reply to this, which is, “We can do hard things.” So if you can answer your brain with that, you will give yourself the momentum to keep moving forward on whatever your goals are.

So what that it’s hard? I can do hard things, I am willing to do hard things, and just let it be hard and choose to move forward anyway. That’s going to be the key to your success.

Alright, number five. People don’t achieve impossible goals because they think they need to know how. This makes sense, right? When your brain says, “But I don’t know how to do that,” it feels like a valid thought. It feels like it’s just true. It feels like a legitimate reason and that is why those people’s higher brain will reply with it’s true, we don’t know how.

But not you because you’re the kind of person who achieves impossible goals, and so you’re going to answer that brain with, “Of course I don’t know how.” Of course you don’t know how because do you know how to do something? You go do it and then you know how.

So if you knew how, you would have already done it. That’s why you haven’t done it yet is because you don’t know how. But the truth is you don’t need to know how. You just need to know what the next step is. What is the next step I need to take? That’s all I need to know to keep moving forward.

Number six, most people will not achieve impossible goals because they aren’t willing to keep believing no matter what. Their lower brain wants to doubt it. I’m not sure I can do this. And if you don’t know how to pay attention and answer, your higher brain will just answer with yeah, I know, good point.

Notice that in every one of these examples, the higher brain is just kind of believing and going along with the lower brain. That’s always the problem. Sometimes the lower brain does have a valid point and sometimes you do want to listen and go along with it, but knowing that you have the option, that you can step back and observe it and question it and decide whether or not it’s serving you is the key to all of this.

So when your lower brain says, “I’m just not sure I can do this,” you have to be willing to believe even without having any outside proof. You have to be willing to just answer that toddler with, “Of course I can, it’s as good as done.”

When I first started my coaching practice and I didn’t know if I was going to be able to be successful, I didn’t have any proof. I didn’t have any right believing it. I didn’t have any evidence to the contrary. What I told myself was listen, as long as I just keep going, it’s inevitable that I’ll get there. As long as I just never quit, success is inevitable.

So of course I can do this because I’m intelligent enough and I have some amazing skills and tools that I’ve learned through my coach training and there are lots of people that I can hire to help me if I really need to. Of course I can do this. And if you’re willing to just believe and not need to know how like we talked about in the last step, then it’s inevitable that you will get there no matter how impossible your goal is.

Number seven and the one I want to spend just a little bit more time fleshing out is that people don’t achieve impossible goals because they are past-focused instead of future-focused. The brain loves to go to the past. The brain has a lot to call on from the past.

So it says, “I probably won’t be able to do this because I’ve never done it before.” Especially if it’s a goal that you’ve tried before and failed at, your brain will for sure tell you you’ve tried and you’ve never been able to do it, you probably won’t be able to.

And if you don’t pay attention, your higher brain will just say, “Good point. Might as well turn back now.” So you have to be willing to redirect your brain to the future. When my brain tells me that, which it still does all the time, it says, “You’re probably never going to achieve that goal, you never have before,” and what I tell it is, “Yeah, but that’s in the past. Let’s go to the future.”

Let’s think about the future. I really want to encourage you guys and teach you today how to go to the future and how to leverage that future self. So it begins with you picturing your future self. Now, when I say your future self, I want you to take whatever the goal is, whatever your impossible goal is that you’re trying to achieve, and I want you to picture the you who has already achieved that goal.

Now, this is going to be a challenging step for many of you because again, your brains are like – they can’t even imagine it. So just the practice of picturing yourself having achieved it is really, really powerful to begin with. So I like to begin with something that I can wrap my head around like that future me that’s achieved that goal, what does she wear each day? How does she dress? What does her home look like?

I think about the tangible visible things because for some reason in my head, my future me that’s achieved my goal has a really clean home. I don’t know why those things correlate in my head but they do. And she dresses a certain way. So picture your future self. Begin with those things if that’s easiest for you like it is for me.

And then ask yourself okay, that future version of me, what does she or he believe about current you’s ability to do this? I love this one because I get to mentor and work with a lot of you who are building businesses in my coaching practice. All kinds of businesses we’re building in there. And you guys are so full of doubt about your ability sometimes to do something.

If it’s something I’ve already done, it’s so easy for me to believe in you. I’m like, “No listen, you can totally do it. I did it and if I did it, you can do it.” Isn’t it so easy to believe in a goal that you’ve already accomplished? Especially if it’s somebody else that you respect and admire and you’re just like, listen, I’ll just tell you how and you’ll just do it, it’s so easy.

So I want you to know that you can go to your future self who’s already achieved it and he or she will look back at you now and say don’t worry, I know you’re freaking out, I know you’re doubting, but I promise you, you can do this. What does he believe or she believe about you right now and what would she say to you right now?

What does your future self think about whatever your current problem or hang-up is? Wherever you’re stalled out or stuck in your goal, what does your future self think about it? Because your current self probably thinks this is such a big deal and this is so overwhelming and this is so hard and how am I ever going to get through this? That’s what we tend to think about our current problems.

But I want you to think about a problem from your past that was a problem that then you solved and moved through. I even think about what were some of the most challenging times of my life and I still look back at them and go, “Oh yeah, that wasn’t that big a deal.” Once we get through the problem and we find the solution and we find our way through it, we’re like, “Yeah, that was okay. That wasn’t that big of a deal. I thought it was terrible at the time but in hindsight it wasn’t that big of a deal.”

So interesting to notice that your future self even looks at your current problems and challenges and says don’t worry, you’re going to figure this out, and one day you’re going to look back and it’s not going to be a big deal. Now, sometimes you’re going to be trying to achieve things on the way to your goal and some of the things aren’t going to work.

Remember, we said we have to be willing to fail along the way. So when you fail, you have the opportunity to choose what you’re going to say to yourself, what you’re going to make that failure mean about yourself or your goal or your ability to achieve that future goal.

So again, rather than just default to your lower brain or go to the past, I want you to go to your future self, that you that’s already achieved it. What does he or she say to you right now after you just had what you would define as a failure?

Again, it’s probably some version of don’t worry, this is no big deal, this is just a little minor setback and in fact, you had to have this happen in order to learn some things, or you needed to be slowed down in this way to point you in a different direction. This is the way.

I love the idea that it’s all rigged in your favor. That’s what your future you says, that’s what my future me says to me. Let’s access her. She’s so much wiser, she’s so much kinder, and she’s so much more useful than just my default lower brain.

What decisions does that future you make in any given situation? So any time you’re asking yourself, what should I do in this situation, what should I do with regards to my eating plan, if you have a weight loss goal, what should I do about this customer complaint in my business, what decisions should I make in this dating relationship, what should I do with my child in this situation, again, go to your future self that’s achieved whatever it is you’re trying to achieve and ask yourself, what would she do?

What decisions does she make in this situation? And make your decisions from that future place. Not from where you are now. The idea is that we’re trying to close the gap between who we are now and who we will be in the future when we’ve achieved that impossible goal. And as you close the gap and you can do it step-by-step, little bit little. There’s no need to be in a rush.

This isn’t the kind of thing that necessarily is going to happen overnight, nor does it have to. But as you wrestle with becoming your future self and you leverage your future self to guide you to who she is, that is the way to achieve some pretty impossible goals.

So I like to begin with the basic things like you know what, my future self, she doesn’t wear yoga pants and pajamas all day when she’s working. And so I don’t either. I dress up in nice clothes, even if I’m not going to be on webcam all day, even if I’m just going to be in my office alone doing my work.

I wear the kind of clothes that I think my future self wears. If you have a weight loss goal, this is important. Some of you are like, “I don’t want to go buy new clothes that fit my body because I’m going to lose weight,” and I want you to ask yourself, your future you that’s at your ideal healthy weight, does she wear clothes that fit or not?

Of course she does, right? So go buy yourself a few things that fit your body. You got to become that future you now. You got to be operating from the emotions that you think you’ll have once you achieve your goal. You have to be thinking the way you’ll be thinking once you’ve achieved that goal.

That is the way to not just set some little goals. I’m all for having like, smart goals and little goals and you can have those if you want to. There’s no shame in that. There’s nothing wrong with that. This is not about judging anyone. But some of you want to set some impossible goals and to set impossible goals, you have to stretch yourself to think differently.

You have to think in the future, you have to become your future self right now. And here is the last thing I want to leave you with. I want to give you permission to become your future self right now because some of you think that you don’t have any right to think or feel that way, that it’s unrealistic, that you’re pretending, that you’re being a fraud of some sort.

And I want to just call some BS on that right now and I want to tell you that you’re allowed to be whoever you want to be and to up-level yourself in any way you want to right now just because you choose to. As you become her or him, I’m telling you, you will not only achieve your goals, but you will serve all of the people around you so much better. Step into her.

Alright, thanks for joining me today you guys, have an amazing week and I will see you next week for another episode. Take care.

If you have a question about something you’ve heard me talk about on this podcast or anything else going on in your life, I want to invite you to a free public call, Ask Jody Anything. I will teach you the main coaching tool I use with all of my clients and the way to solve any problem in your life, and we will plug in real life examples.

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