Turning Setbacks into Stepping Stones on the Path to Achieving Your Goals

Welcome to the Executive Coach For Moms podcast where we support women who are attempting to find balance and joy while simultaneously leading people at work and at home. I'm your host, Leanna Laskey McGrath, former tech exec turned full time mom, recovering perfectionist and workaholic, and certified executive coach. 

Hi, everyone. Welcome back to the show. Thank you so much for joining me today. Today, we're gonna dive into a topic that feels especially relevant as we move through January, how we often expect progress to happen in a straight line, but life rarely actually works this way. This time of year, many of us set big ambitious goals for ourselves, but then life happens. Kids get sick. We get sick. Daycare closes. A key player on our team gives notice. A huge deal falls through, and suddenly, it feels like we're falling behind. And our excitement about our big goals and dreams that we started off the year with is overshadowed by the disappointments and setbacks. In this episode today, I'm going to unpack why setbacks aren't actually failures, but they are an integral part of growth and progress. And I'm gonna help you reframe these challenges that will inevitably arise so that you don't use them as a reason to not continue working towards your goals and dreams.

So last week, we did the January reset. I hope you were able to participate. If not, you can go back and listen to the 5 previous episodes that I released last week. Essentially, we talked about taking a look at where you are now and then looking ahead to where you'd like to be and what is the path to get there in creating a plan. When we envision our big goals for ourselves and our big hopes and dreams, we often will picture a path that goes from point A, which is where we are now, to point B, where we are going, where we want to be. And we expect that that path is a forward straight linear line. And I think we're conditioned to believe that linear progress is kind of the norm. School is so clear. So from an early age, here in the US, you go from preschool to kindergarten to 1st, then 2nd, then 3rd, and so on until 12th grade. And then you go to college for x number of years and then grad school or medical school or law school or whatever next school you go to or you get a job. And when you are done with school, there's often a very clearly defined path for you early in your career. In higher ed where I started, it was like you go from graduate assistant, and it's usually 2 years of that, and then coordinator, and it's 1 to 3 years of that, and then assistant director for a few years, and then associate director and then director. And and it just is very clearly laid out. And in many professions, that's the case, especially some of the older well defined, well established professions. 

So we've set up these systems of forward progress and we believe that that's how everything should happen. And especially with our high achiever mindset, we figure out how to navigate these paths and to become very, very good, very efficient, and effective at following those paths. I did a really great episode a while back. It was episode 23 with Jess where we talked about nonlinear paths. So if you wanna hear more about this topic, then go back and give that one a listen. It was a, it was a great conversation, and we were specifically talking about career paths.

But these linear paths are so appealing to us, right, because they're predictable. We can plan for them. We know how to be successful in them. We know what to expect. We know what we need to do. We know what's required of us, and we're conditioned to believe that forward progress is the only kind of progress, especially as high achievers. But as we learn at some point or another, life is inherently unpredictable, especially as we get older and we have more variables. I think for many of us, life was a lot more simple and predictable before kids and navigating child care and their schools, before advancing into management and executive roles, before having aging parents and navigating that, before owning a home or a car, or just all of these adult things. And it feels like we add more and more of them. And then also things that happen out in the world like COVID, for example. It seems like there used to be fewer variables, and so we had more control or we felt like we had more control because kind of like a car with fewer features, it's like less things can go wrong when there are fewer variables. 

So maybe you made a plan to work out 3 times a week, but your kid got the flu and then it ran through the house. And now you have the flu and we're halfway through January and you haven't made it to the gym yet. Or maybe you plan to launch a big project at work so you could get noticed and put yourself forward for that big promotion that you've been wanting to go for and then a key member of your team quit, and now you're having to balance their workload with searching for a replacement while doubling down on engagement retention efforts so that you don't lose anyone else. And I think these disruptions can leave us feeling like we fail and, like, we'll never get to where we wanna go. They can be really deflating, especially when we came into the new year with all this positive energy and optimism about what the new year was gonna hold and we're so excited about our goals and then these obstacles present. 

And I just wanna offer the idea to consider, what if setbacks are actually a part of the process? What if they aren't keeping you from making progress on your goal? What if they're actually helping you or teaching you in ways that you can't see yet? So think of it like hiking a mountain. Sometimes you have to navigate around boulders or take detours. Sometimes you may even have to backtrack a little bit to find a better path because the one that you were on, you realize isn't gonna get you to the top. But, ultimately, you're still moving toward the summit. You still have that goal in mind. And no matter how you get there and what you encounter along the way and what changes you need to make along the way, you're still moving toward the summit and you're still going to get there. And when you keep yourself focused on your goal, you will get there. It may not be in the same time frame that you initially thought. It may not be on the same path that you mapped out, but it is still available for you to reach. 

And I just wanna offer that when these things come up, it's totally natural to feel disappointed by them. Of course, you're going to. You're human and that's normal. But you can choose if you wanna indulge in these negative emotions. If you wanna go down the rabbit hole of feeling discouraged and unmotivated and then unconsciously letting it become a reason to quit, a reason not to reach your goals, that is an option available to you. And I think anytime we make a decision, it's important to ask ourselves, do I like my reasons? And if getting the flu is a good reason to not run the half marathon you decided to run this year, then that is your call. If losing your star employee is a good reason to not go for the promotion this year, that's entirely up to you. 

You get to decide that. But I think what happens most often is that we get unconscious. We kind of stop thinking about the goal and we just start only thinking about the obstacle and then we just don't go towards that goal anymore. But I just think it's important to make sure you're honest with yourself and understand that you are choosing that. You are choosing to not go for that goal anymore, and that is an option. And I think that you are empowered to make that decision, that you can let the flu or the turnover be a reason not to go for that goal, or you can let it be a part of the journey that gets you there so that when you cross the finish line or when you announce your new promotion, you can say, you know, it really wasn't easy, but I did it. I almost quit a bunch of times, but I didn't, because this goal was really important to me. And you can feel really good about yourself and about the person that you became by overcoming those challenges and sticking to what's important to you. 

So if you're feeling discouraged, just know that your goals are still there and they're still waiting for you. They're just sitting there waiting for you to take the action required to achieve them. 

While I was writing this episode, one of my amazing friends called and I told her what I was working on. And she said, oh, are you talking about quitters Friday? And I had never heard of this. And apparently, I looked it up, there is a day called Quitters Day. It's observed on the 2nd Friday of January, and it marks when many people abandon their new year's resolutions and goals, and it generally happens due to setting unrealistic goals, a lack of planning, or not seeing immediate results. So if you are thinking about or if maybe that this past Friday, you just, you know, kind of fell off the wagon or decided to quit or kind of was like, that's never gonna happen for me, you can always change courses. Just like you changed course on Friday, you can change course today and decide to go for it again. 

And I wanna share some actionable strategies for dealing with these challenges as they come up. So one is to pause and reflect. Take a moment to acknowledge what's happening and your feelings about it without judgment. It sucks to be sick. Nobody likes being sick, and it's not fun at all whenever your kids are sick, and it's the worst whenever your whole family's sick, and you're trying to take care of your kids while you're sick yourself and your partner's sick, and it's just it's it's not fun. And so just pause and reflect on it and just be with what is because it's okay for it to be tough. 

Number 2 is to adjust your expectations. So maybe revisit your goals and make sure they're realistic for your current circumstances. Maybe you need to adjust your time frame or maybe you need more support than you originally thought or maybe you just need to rethink the goal. Maybe if you're trying to run that half marathon in February and you've had the flu for all of January, then that's not the one to sign up for. Maybe you sign up for the one in March or April. 

Number 3, refocus on your goal. So here's what's gonna happen. Here's what our brains will do whenever a challenge presents itself. Our brain will focus on that challenge and how terrible it is and how what a bummer it is. That's what it's generally gonna wanna do by default. And so it is up to you to refocus your brain. When your brain wants to focus on the challenge in front of you, redirect it to your goal. Go back and read your vision statement. Sit and journal about your why. Why did you choose these goals in the first place? Why is this so important to you? We have to constantly redirect our brains to focus on the outcome we desire. Otherwise, it will get caught up in what's right in front of us. And a lot of times, it's in the little steps day to day. 

And number 4 is kinda related to this, but go smaller for now if needed. Progress is not always in these huge leaps. Sometimes it's these little steps that matter most. So you wanna ask yourself every day, what can I do today to get me closer to my goal? What can I do today to start to realize my vision? Today, that might be to rest to get over this flu so you can get back to the gym. And then honor yourself for working towards your goal, maybe in a different way than you had planned. Maybe it it doesn't fall into your training plan that you designed on January 1st that was gonna look great before this obstacle came up, but honor yourself for doing what you need to do today to get towards your goal. Today, it might be to rewrite that job description to backfill your star player to ensure you get another star so you can go on and get your big promotion. And that might not feel like progress towards your goal. You can sit there and think about it as, you know, this isn't something that I wanted to do. This isn't something that I needed to do to get to my goal. I mean, you can spend all that time arguing with reality, but it's really kind of a waste of energy. We need to look at what is in front of us and sometimes take actions that are not the actions we initially wanted to be making toward our goals, but that's what's needed today. So just ask yourself, what can I do today with what I have right now with the circumstances in front of me? And then again, honor yourself for taking that step. It might not have been the step that you initially thought you would need to take whenever you set out on this plan, but it is the step that is needed today with the new circumstances in this unpredictable life that we are in.

So to recap, obstacles, challenges, so-called setbacks, do not mean that you have failed. They don't need to hold you back, and they absolutely do not mean that you need to give up on your goals and hopes and dreams. Going out and around, taking a rest, backtracking a bit, it does not mean you're off the path. And it doesn't mean you're failing. It does not mean that you won't get there.  It simply means that you're a human, having a human experience, which is inherently unpredictable, and it's all part of the journey. And it's just making this journey something different than what you thought it would be. And my wish for you is that however treacherous or challenging your journey may be to get to where you want to go, that you encounter some unexpected adventures along the way that are gonna make the journey more interesting, and also that you enjoy some beautiful views along the way as well. 

Thanks for tuning in everybody. I'll see you all next week. Bye. 

Thanks so much for tuning in to the Executive Coach for Moms podcast. Please like, subscribe, or follow the show so you'll be notified when the next episode is available. I hope you'll join me again next time. Take care.