Welcome to the Mindset Coach Academy Podcast. I'm Lindsey Wilson and I am a high-performance mindset coach, a mom, a former professional athlete and entrepreneur. I help coaches and high performers optimize their mindset to improve their coaching, their performance in those other athletes and their lives. Here you'll learn all about mindset, how to live it, how to teach it and how to sell it. Hi guys and welcome back to the Mindset Coach Academy Podcast.
My name is Lindsey Wilson and it is Mental Monday. I want to talk about goals. I want to talk about the downside of accomplishing your goals. So you know, goal setting and of course what we teach with visualization, it's really important to think about and get excited about the results, getting your self believing that it's possible, getting your subconscious comfortable with that new you and you know, obviously increasing your motivation by getting pumped about it happening.
That's all important. But what is also important is talking about the downside of your goal because your brain actually knows that there's a downside. It knows not only that there's discomfort associated with it, but there also may be loss. There may be things that you subconsciously want to avoid even as you quote unquote want this big goal.
So it's really important to bring those things out into the light of day because here's the thing. It doesn't actually matter if the thing is real. Okay, it doesn't actually matter if it's true that it's going to be discomfort or it's true that it's going to be a loss or or anything.
It matters that you believe it. So let me give you a couple examples. So one example would be, you know, let's say I have a job that I want to get and I say that I want to get it. I really want to get it. I'm, you know, committed to get it.
I do my visualization, but I don't actually believe that I can get that goal and be the kind of mom that I want to be. I'm just giving you an example. It doesn't actually matter if that's true or not. It doesn't actually matter if I can or cannot do both. If I have a fear that I'm not going to have enough time with my kids if I accomplish that goal and I haven't really worked that through and brought it out to the light of day and say, well, is that really true or would I be able to have more time with my kids because I'd be working just these hours or I'd set up my schedule so I'd be doing it while they're in school.
It doesn't matter if it's true or not. If there's a side of me that believes that there's going to be this huge loss and I haven't discussed that with myself, if I've only talked about the upside and I've not talked about the downside or the perceived downside, I won't go for the goal or at least I'll be going while I'll also be holding myself back. Okay. So I remember this when I was playing basketball in high school and I wanted to play at the next level. In order to do that, there was going to be some loss and I'll tell you what it was. It was the loss or the perceived loss of being liked. I was going to lose some friends. I was going to not be liked by everybody. I was going to be the driven one that wasn't really, at least in my mind, that accepted by everybody else. And so there was this hidden, I would say this is a hidden cost, that again, it didn't matter if it was true or not, that to me felt like there was gonna be this loss on the way to my goal.
And for that one, I did have a, I had a coach that actually walked me through, do you wanna be liked, or do you wanna play at the next level? And when it was brought out to the light of day, I could see the loss and I could see the gain, and I could consciously make the decision, well, what's more important to me? When we don't do this process, we only think about the good things, then we have this, this cognitive dissonance in our brain, we have this conflict between what we say that we want and what we don't wanna lose, okay? So other examples would be, getting healthier or getting in better shape or losing weight, there may be a loss there, there may be a loss of, I don't know, going out and eating nachos and having margaritas with your friends, right? Like might be a cost that you're willing to pay, but there's still a loss there, moving into a bigger house.
You may say that you want it, but then you really like your neighbors, so there's a loss there. And so just really, there's no right or wrong answers here, this is just an exercise to understand that every goal has a downside, and every gain incurs some sort of loss, and we all have to do the mental calculations according to our principles and our desires and what's most important to us. The challenge is when we don't ask the question, when we don't again bring the downside to the light of day, then we're pulling ourselves, working against ourselves because our brain actually knows, it knows there's going to be a loss associated with it, a loss of time, right?
I'm gonna have less time if I get to this next level, or at least I perceive that I'm gonna have less time, I'm gonna have less freedom if I get this job, or I perceive that I'm gonna have less freedom. Whatever it is, your brain knows that there's something there, even if it can't put its finger on it, and so doing this exercise, what's the upside of this goal? But what is the downside? Because your brain knows that it's there, if you don't talk about it, it's just gonna make something up, or it's just gonna have this blanket feeling of like, I don't actually know what that is, so I am not going for it. So what is the downside of accomplishing your goal?
There's one there, mine as well start talking about it. All right guys, that's your homework for this week. There you go, all right, Mental Monday, hope to see you next week, bye for now.
Hi guys, Lindsey here. If you love this podcast, I wanna ask you to do three things to help us, and to help us grow mindset and mental performance coaching. The first is to subscribe to this podcast. It helps us and it helps you because you'll never miss an important episode. The second thing is to rate and review. You guys, that stuff really does help, I promise. And just taking a minute and clicking those stars and leaving a review about an episode that you like, really does help us. And the third would please share an episode that particularly resonated with you with someone that you love. You'll be doing them a favor, I promise. All right guys, thanks so much for listening, and we'll see you next week, bye for now.
