Episode 19: When You Should Give Up On A Goal
So much of our culture is about grind hard, hustle culture. Society tells us that giving up makes us a failure - yikes.
What if we told you giving up on a goal is associated with mentally strong people who have more life satisfaction? For real.
Knowing when to stop and when to push through is what episode 19 of Sturdy Girl is all about. Learn when you should give up on a goal and what the best kind of goals are.
Be sure to tune in for the date announcement of our official apparel drop! You can shop apparel and stickers here: https://www.sturdygirl.co/shop.
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Stay Sturdy, friends.
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Jess: 0:01
Hello, friends, and welcome to Sturdy Girl, a podcast focused on strength, not size, where you'll hear conversations around healthy body image, cultivating confidence and being a resilient human in both body and mind. Sturdy Girl is the podcast where we shift the focus away from your appearance and on to living the big, rad life you deserve. Hello, friends, and welcome to Sturdy Girl. Megan, we're hanging out in our sweet podcast studio. Hello.
Megan: 0:29
How are you? We are. It is so high-tech in here, it's crazy.
Jess: 0:32
We're making improvements slowly, let's be honest, but let's talk about when we should give up on a goal. All right this sounds so sad, but it's not. I was telling Blake about this episode and he's like you need to make it positive when you should give up on a goal. He's like you need to tell them what they should do, instead Like yes, it's coming.
Megan: 0:52
It's not just give up on your goals. The whole point is like it's February.
Jess: 0:56
We are six weeks into the new year. Most people set some kind of goal or intention for the new year. They want to strive towards something, achieve something. If statistics can be believed, most people give up on their new year's resolutions by now Looking at. Do these goals still serve you? When should you give up on one? That's really what we want to tackle to give you permission to take a minute and reevaluate or maybe adjust Exactly. This isn't us saying screw it and throw it all out the window.
Megan: 1:27
But if you become injured all of a sudden, maybe your goals have to change. Yes, maybe you have to realign.
Jess: 1:33
Are you speaking from experience? No, as Megan's, holding up her sad little hand, her poor finger and its little brace. Right now it's fine, everything's good.
Megan: 1:44
Yes, so adjusting.
Jess: 1:46
There's a lot of reasons why we should pursue a goal that we intrinsically know, and I don't think it's worth pointing out how we choose goals or those things. But we understand challenging ourselves. But our culture is so toxic positivity. Quitters never win and winners never quit. The hustle, the grind, but sometimes being the stronger person is knowing when to bow out, when to quit, when to stop wasting our energy on a goal that doesn't serve us, and that's kind of the whole point of this is our goals and our achievements can get interwoven with our identities, and so this is a big fat permission slip to quit if you want or need to.
Megan: 2:23
And your identities change too. So I mean, why can't your goals along with them?
Jess: 2:27
Yeah, and segue for just a second, but just thinking along the lines of identity and goal setting. I ran marathons for 10 years, give or take. I got so into it and then so burnt out. So kind of the culmination was three marathon cycles in 13 months. I ran that last one with bronchitis yeah, I remember that Cried across the finish line, which I mean most of the time I do anyways. And then I didn't touch running shoes for six months, yeah, and every time I tried to touch my running shoes to put them on, I started crying. I was so burnt out because all of a sudden, this thing that I loved and was doing all the time and had woven my identity around no longer served me for so many reasons. And that foundational identity shift taught me so much about having activities in our lives that support the things we want to do, but not necessarily letting it be our entire identity.
Megan: 3:16
Yes, this is huge Anyway this was like our conversation that we had Even when I first injured, when I really found out how bad my injury was and how long it was going to take to recover.
Jess: 3:28
it was kind of the same thing of my identity is this my identity as an Enduro racer or even just sponsored Enduro?
Megan: 3:35
racer biking.
Jess: 3:36
Yeah, and that can still be something that you love and enjoy and get to return to. And now you're in the season of like, who am I without being on my bike all the time?
Megan: 3:44
Yeah, trying to like running again.
Jess: 3:46
I'll hope Okay, so getting into when should someone give up on a goal?
Megan: 3:51
What are some of the reasons. Well, I would say, when it no longer aligns with your values, the core values.
Jess: 3:56
When you sit down and envision who you want your future self to be because that's kind of what the core values is it's like. Am I showing up as a person I want to be or who I want to become? If they no longer align with those? It's time to give it up If your favorite version of you, your future self, the person that you are becoming, doesn't do that activity then what are we doing?
Megan: 4:17
Or enjoy that activity.
Jess: 4:19
Exactly, yeah, the enjoyment piece too, and this is a shameless plug to go back to season one and listen to our episode on core values. If you're sitting there going, jess, I don't know what my core values are, find out.
Megan: 4:30
There's an entire episode.
Jess: 4:32
There is a download to go and reflect, give you a little homework to figure out what are your core values, but that's kind of thing number one. And then when we should give up on a goal, when the only part of the goal that matters is the end result, if you are a runner and you enjoy running, but then all of a sudden you are only pursuing a sub two hour half marathon for the sake of the sub two hour half marathon, if you have set the goal to lift a certain number of pounds or qualify for nationals or qualify for whatever, when that's all that matters, you've lost the purpose of it.
Megan: 5:04
Well, and we were talking before too. Even when I got an Olympic lifting coach, he wouldn't you know what I love him for it now, but at the time it was such a foreign concept. He wouldn't let me set goals as far as actual weight numbers. It was more of like let's work towards percentages and this and it was such a towards proficiency and consistency and frequency Yep. Right there and my little brain at the time was like what I want to hit this? You're like really.
Jess: 5:30
The skill building part is more important than this, are you?
Megan: 5:32
kidding me. I need to actually know how to do these lifts first. What?
Jess: 5:36
Yeah, and that's huge. Yeah, because you can have a goal.
Megan: 5:40
Yeah.
Jess: 5:41
I work with runners all the time who are like Jess, I want to run a sub four hour marathon, I want to run a sub two hour half. We want those things, but there's more to it than just that thing. That's. The whole point here is, if you're not looking at any of the growth, like personal growth or changes through the process, then you've entirely missed the point of setting that goal in the first place. And if you take nothing else from this episode, we spend 99% of our time in pursuit of our goals and less than 1% achieving it. What are we doing if the only part that matters is the end result? If we no longer enjoy any or some of the parts of the process and that's our next point here you should give up on a goal when you don't enjoy any of it. Wait, have a tendency as humans to be constantly striving. It's not necessarily a bad thing, but it can be that double-edged sword of Well, I hit the two hour half marathon, so now my goals won 50. So now my goals won 45. And we never slow down to enjoy any part of the process or celebrate the fact that we achieve that one goal post first. We just keep moving the goal post. It's like being on the hamster wheel always on the wheel, always on the wheel, never actually getting anywhere.
Megan: 6:51
Yeah, well, and I loved to like even when I set my own goals. When I was lifting heavy, my personal goal was to be able to clean and jerk above how much I weigh. It was a pretty heavy goal, considering like what I had been up before. I feel like I would always do those check-ins and it was almost like cause the process is the process of trying to reach. But yeah, it's just was like being able to kind of look at that and being like, oh well, I used to only be able to do 135. Now I can do 145 and it's easy. Now I can do this, now I can do 155 and it feels easy. So it's like those small check-ins, the process, and that was really fun.
Jess: 7:22
Going to your point of checking in and you're probably just gonna like jump around a little bit.
Megan: 7:27
We'll get into this a little more of how important it is to check in with that process.
Jess: 7:31
But going back to our point, like when you don't enjoy the process, when you're not enjoying any part of pursuing the goal, when you burn out, like I did, and you can't even freaking lace up your shoes without crying, but just like if you set these goals, if it's increasing stress, anxiety, worry, it might not be something worth pursuing, it might be worth giving up on. That being said, the other side of this, it is going to be uncomfortable to pursue a goal. When you go back to that future self, that future self and who you wanna become, they're doing things probably differently and better to whatever that means to you, than you are doing now. It's the difference of discomfort in pursuit of a goal that's actually something worth achieving. We're not saying chasing your goals.
Megan: 8:11
I keep using marathon running because marathon running is a metaphor for life, but, like not every part of that is going to be easy.
Jess: 8:17
It's going to be hard. It's not sunshine and roses to set goals. That's not the point of this.
Megan: 8:20
Oh no, they should push you out of your comfort zone Absolutely. Those are the best goals.
Jess: 8:24
That's part of that pursuit, but maybe you don't enjoy any parts of the process. It's increasing stress at the point that you cannot enjoy any part of it. Or maybe you don't care about the goal anymore, or it's not the season. I'm just thinking about all the goals that you had as far as racing and with your hand injury. Right now you are not riding, so maybe it's not that you don't care, but it's like you can't enjoy any part of the process.
Megan: 8:45
Yeah, I can't even hold a handle bar, it's fine.
Jess: 8:47
When you think about, too, just the reasons you do things. Another reason to give up on our goals or goal is when your motivations or your why for doing something is no longer serving you. Maybe you decided to do the goal for the wrong reasons. We talk about intrinsic versus extrinsic motivation. We're motivated by external factors People giving us praise or accolades are encouraging us to do things versus intrinsically motivated. Why are we doing it for ourselves, for something personally meaningful? Those are the kinds of goals we want to set, but sometimes we set goals because we got peer pressured, because a marathon is what follows a half marathon, right, when we don't actually have the motivation or desire to run a marathon. Everyone on social media is doing it. That's the running space, really. Oh, you ran a 5k, well, now we're in a 10k. We're in a 10k, oh, we're in a half marathon. And you just keep going. Well, I ran a trail marathon, well, I better dip into ultras now.
Megan: 9:36
Yeah, you were talking about this before. Personally, there was a point in time where I was like I want to run a marathon, but I didn't really like running to race or to run a race. I just kind of enjoyed it for just being outside and going at my own pace and doing whatever I wanted. And so that wouldn't be a very realistic goal for me. It's not that I don't look at that and I say I don't want to ever run a marathon, but it's just, maybe I don't actually want to sign up for that race, maybe I just kind of want to do whatever I want to do.
Jess: 10:00
You can do what I did for my 30th and run from end to end. It's like 32 miles, and then I wouldn't eat an entire large pizza. Oh, that makes me so sick for some reason. When you were just on empty, it was amazing.
Megan: 10:12
For some reason, when I run, every time I feel like the worst runner's stomach.
Jess: 10:15
Just take that out of context, pizza's delicious.
Megan: 10:17
It is delicious. Trails are beautiful.
Jess: 10:19
Another thing to consider with this, too, is you don't necessarily have to give up on a goal. You don't have to quit it. You can take a break from pursuing it and see if you have any desire to go back. Is there any tug? If you're like, okay, I'm giving up on this for a while, I'm going to stop making the effort, I'm just. Maybe the goal is a marathon, you're not going to necessarily stop running. But if you say, okay, I'm taking that away and I'm just going to run the distances and times and paces that I enjoy, how does that feel versus pursuing that race? Cause I have plenty of athletes that work with me to work on their running but don't sign up for races because racing and that race environment isn't their jam. Yeah, I think that's awesome. We all have different variations of that goal. And then, along those same lines, giving yourself the power of choice. So maybe you don't give up on the goal, maybe no. Again, marathon example, over and over and over. But when you were in the thick of marathon training and you're running four or five days a week and you're continuing to show up, continuing to show up, there is a certain point in the marathon training cycle where you kind of don't love running anymore and you're tired and your body is depleted and you're learning to eat while running and do all these other things and you're sleeping more and eating more and you're asking yourself, why am I continuing to show up? And if we can just let ourselves contemplate, if I gave up on my goal right now, how'd it feel? Do I feel? Do I feel relieved? Do I like this option If I stop? Do I feel a pull to keep going and let your brain kind of wander with that option to quit? What would that mean for your time and your energy? What would it mean for your life and how you spend your time, your days? Right? Does it make sense to continue pursuing that goal or giving up? It could also be a season. A lot of these questions. They think about a season. You're not going to give up mountain biking forever.
Megan: 11:52
No, you've had to adjust your goals, but it's a season and they'll change. You know, even when you come back to it, You're going to still have your goal of body weight cleaning, jerk, that'll be my goal again.
Jess: 12:01
It's going to be your comeback yeah. But it'll be like a fresh goal. It's going to be hard and I want to go back to just not having to quit on your goal and talking about adjusting the goal, talking about contemplating okay, we can quit our goal, we can think about quitting. We can also adjust it or redefine it. So let's say you set a goal to read 100 books in a year and you get five months into the year and you realize, oh my God, there is no way on this planet I'm achieving 100 books in a year, realistically speaking. Yeah. So you adjust that goal and you say my goal is to read 75 books this year, because that seems realistic and it's manageable. It's also still challenging and I want to challenge myself with this goal, yeah, but it's not so absurd.
Megan: 12:40
It's kind of more within what you can accomplish.
Jess: 12:43
Exactly so, deciding if you should quit asking yourself these questions. What parts of pursuing this goal do I enjoy? Does this goal align with my core values or the person I want to be or become? Is this goal something I truly want for myself? And how do I feel when I contemplate quitting this goal? What would I rather achieve? So, looking at all this, to flip it around a bit, what kind of goals should we set and we kind of alluded to this already Goals that are personally fulfilling Sturdy girls set personally fulfilling goals, personally meaningful goals, ones that we feel like are worth the effort. Goals that are worth the effort are ones that predict persistence and goal striving. We continue to show up when that goal means something to us besides running XX time. Yeah.
Megan: 13:25
Or losing such and such weight.
Jess: 13:26
Right, and there's a lot of research. Actually, just to reassure those of us that consider quitting goals, there's research showing that the ability to determine when quitting is appropriate and then to do so is associated with high levels of personal well-being. So the stronger person knows when to quit, knows when to cut your losses, the time invested, whatever it is to move on to something that is more meaningful to us. So, setting these goals and knowing that we can change them, we can adjust them, and when we look at what kind of goals we should set, there are approach versus avoidance oriented goals. This is how I like to think in terms of we could have a whole episode on how to set good goals. Yeah, making them meaningful to you doesn't mean they need to be quote unquote realistic. What does realistic mean? But looking at this, so approach goals are kind of what can you add? Adding positive or action-oriented goals into your life, and avoidance is more like a focus on avoiding or eliminating undesired outcomes. So approach goals are like what can I add? If my goal is to improve my diet, it's not. Oh, I'm gonna take away sugar. This avoidance goal, I'm avoiding sugar. I'm avoiding all these levels of carbs and whatever making all these arbitrary diet rules. It's what can I add? How do I add more fruits and vegetables? How do I add more fiber into my diet? How do I add more protein or more color? Looking at those things versus avoidance, what am I taking away? There's research that says that setting avoidance goals leads to decreased self-esteem, the feelings of less personal control, less satisfaction with life and feeling less competent and, in turn, less confident in that goal pursuit.
Megan: 14:58
The avoidance-oriented goals reminds me of really restrictive, negative self-talk and it's like I can't do this, I can't do that. I need to take this away. Well, shit, what can I do? Yeah, absolutely. It reminds me of a really bad diet.
Jess: 15:11
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Avoidance goals like what can you take away? It reminds me of some fiction book I read, I don't know 10 years ago, and she would select her diets based on letters of the alphabet. So she's like I'm not only eat foods that start with A, I'm not only eat foods that start with B, I'm not only eat red foods, I'm not only eat and you think about the restrictive, but anyways, another piece of setting I would say, good goals. Another piece of this is setting up consistent time to check in with ourselves. So with my athletes who set goals running, lifting, mindset, body image, whatever it is every single week they have a form to check in with me. Half of that form is for them, half of that form is hey, what did go well this week?
Megan: 15:50
It's like a reflection what didn't go well.
Jess: 15:52
Oh, actually, I had a really great run because I ate X, y and Z before work and I wore these new shoes that I love, whatever it is, and you're able to kind of reflect and say here's what went well, here's what didn't, here's what's working.
Megan: 16:05
Here's what's not. It reminds me of the wrap up when you do in project management. So much reminds me of work, making you reflect. Yeah, what are your lessons learned?
Jess: 16:13
I don't mean for it to be formal in that way, but no, but it's great. I mean it's even good in that one If we set a big goal that is personally meaningful to us. So one of the marathons I ran, I did a fundraiser for an organization that focuses on childhood obesity and getting kids more active. It was personally meaningful. So pursuing this goal and showing up but setting those times to reflect whether that's daily, weekly, bi-weekly, monthly is probably a little far apart. But to say, like, how is this going? Is it going well? Where are my challenges? So, again, like we'd mentioned earlier, if you set a goal to run a marathon and that marathon is in June, and you're getting through and adding mileage to your training plan and you're realizing I still want to run this marathon, but realistically, you know life's gotten in the way work, stress, whatever it is I'm not accumulating mileage enough to run the marathon in June. I'm going to look at a marathon in August or September. That's realistic. I'm adjusting my goal to fit my life and that doesn't make you a failure. Quitting on a goal doesn't make you a failure. Adjusting your goal it's being realistic with yourself and still pursuing the things that you want to becoming the person that you want to be Exactly. I think that we did a pretty good job of covering a lot of this.
Megan: 17:21
Yeah, it didn't end up being as negative as you think, right?
Jess: 17:24
Oh, we're trying to empower you to like live your big rad life that you want, remembering that you have a choice and giving up a goal is one of them. And we're not saying to give up on the goals. Repeat empowering you with choice, even if it's just contemplating the choice of quitting, and then you go. Oh, actually I want to do it. I want to do it.
Megan: 17:42
Maybe I just do it a month later than what I said I was going to, or maybe I want to do it, but I want to do it a little different.
Jess: 17:48
One last thing here. I know we're kind of wrapping up, but I want to just stress the importance of asking yourself a couple of other questions, right, because we went through a list of questions of what to ask yourself when you're considering should I give up on this goal? Should I keep going? And understanding pursuing goals is not easy. It's not sunshine and rainbows, no. So asking yourself this goal that I've set, what am I willing to get uncomfortable for? How much pain am I willing to endure in order to accomplish those things? How do I normally start to sabotage myself when I get scared and uncomfortable? What and who do I need in my life to hold me accountable when I start to sabotage myself? All of these questions are really important. In consideration again is like needing to give up on the goal, or is it that we need better or different support? Are we self-sabotaging in pursuit of this goal because we're letting self-doubt and negative self-talk take over and saying I don't think you can do this, running a marathon of who do you think you are right? And you let that self-talk come in. Ask yourself these questions before you just like, oh yeah, well, I considered giving up and it sounds great, so I'm good, it sucks. I didn't want to do it anymore. What are you willing to get uncomfortable for? Yeah, we're getting out of our comfort zone as part of growth, as part of becoming the person we want to be, living the life we want to live. That's the whole point here. So what is worth spending your precious time and energy on? That's the point. How are you going to live a rad sturdy girl life? Friends, thank you so much for listening. We will catch you next Friday for another episode and, before we wrap up, we are into the second season. The first season felt like a lot of trial and error, a lot of showing up, figuring it out. When they say, fuck around and find out, and I'm loving this process. I just wanna say it would mean the world to me, if you are enjoying this podcast, to like us on Apple Podcasts, spotify, wherever you get your podcasts, subscribe, leave a rating. We are just about ready to drop Sturdy Girl merch finally and I've seen it and we'd like to start doing merch giveaways for those that are leaving reviews on the podcast. So please, please, please, share the love we had. Mean the world. Lastly, giving a huge shout out to the OG, sturdy Girl and the person behind the scenes making this podcast sound as amazing as it does. My husband, blake, who, without him, sturdy Girl would not exist Like, truly, you can ask, megan, the whole origin story of Sturdy Girl happened in 2022. And Blake spent six months telling me how important it was to continue these conversations that I started having about being sturdy, about body image, about self-confidence and resilience, both physical and mental, and I just was like, yeah, you're right, but I don't have the bandwidth. Yeah, you're right, six months of him like I'm gonna say encouraging, but I was gonna also say like poking your product because he's like Jessica, god damn it.
Megan: 20:26
There's something here.
Jess: 20:27
So huge shout out to Blake. We love him. Thanks, guys, for listening. We will catch you next week. Bye, thanks for listening, friends. As you now are aware, we are dropping episodes on Fridays now, so we will catch you next Friday. Thanks for listening. If you enjoyed this podcast episode, please feel free to follow, subscribe, like whatever the heck you do with podcasts. As always, stay sturdy, friends, and we'll talk to you next week.