Do you often question if your dreams and goals are just not meant for someone like you? Do you find yourself putting aside the vision you’ve cast for your life, saying, “I’ll get to that later..”? You’re not alone!
In this article (and podcast episode) I’m going to be talking about committing to your goals and sharing my story of how I made the commitment to launch my dream business! I sincerely hope it gets you into the right mindset and inspires you to launch your dream business too!
By the way, if you’d rather listen than read, here’s where you can tune in to this episode:
Before we get started…I want to invite you to my free online training called: The 4-Part Formula For Replacing Your 9-5 Income With A Coaching Business You Love, and that’s exactly what I teach you, inside the class. There has never been a better time to pursue your dreams of a business that gives you freedom, flexibility, and fulfillment — plus the ability to work from the comfort and safety of your own home — and I teach you my exact system for doing that inside this free training.
Making Your Goal Non-Negotiable
First, let’s start by talking about why it’s so important to make your goals non-negotiable. As in: there are no ifs, ands, or buts. You are going to make those goals happen.
This is not always an easy mindset shift to make, because a lot of times, when we’re talking about goal-setting, when we’re dreaming our dreams and creating vision boards, it’s often in the mindset of: “Oh, this would be really nice to reach this goal. It would be such a fantasy for this thing to happen, and I would really love that. I wish this would happen.”
But we don’t always make it in nonnegotiable. Maybe you think, “Well, that dream outcome might happen for someone else, but not for me. That’s the kind of thing that other people get to have, but realistically, it’s not really for me.” Or maybe you think, “It would be nice, but I really don’t have the time to make that dream happen.” Or, “This would be great, but let’s be serious — I don’t really have the experience to make that dream happen now. I don’t really know how to make that happen.”
Here’s what all those thoughts are — They are all limiting beliefs. They’re excuses. They are objections your brain is coming up with to keep you safe. Which is what your brain, the primitive part of your brain, is supposed to do. So it’s doing its job. But until you recognize them for what they are, they’ll be running the show.
The good news is, you can override those limiting beliefs with the more sophisticated part of your brain. One of the best ways to do that is to make your goal non-negotiable and commit to your goal.
This looks like truly committing, no matter how busy you are, because you’re going to find the time — even if it’s five minutes here and five minutes there. Also, it doesn’t matter if you don’t have the experience, you’re going to get the experience, you’re going to build up your skills, and you’re going to improve your mindset of believing that you can make that dream happen.
You also need to banish the thoughts that these kinds of goals are only for other people. They are for you, too. And if you make it a non-negotiable, you’re going to make that dream happen too.
Without that non-negotiable attitude, your brain is always going to come up with reasons, excuses, and objections — Again, to keep you safe and to keep you in your comfort zone.
And as I say a lot: if you fight for your limiting beliefs, you get to keep them.
My Story — Overcoming the Struggle to Commit to my Goals
Let me tell you a story. I haven’t always made my dreams non-negotiable and completely committed to my goals either.
I’m obviously a coach now, and I’ve been doing this for several years… but I was stuck, too, once upon a time.
Felt totally stuck in my career and although I was dreaming of something different, I just couldn’t seem to make it happen.
I was working in clinical medicine, that was my only real income source, and I was the lead physician at the clinic where I worked. Which meant not only did I have my own patients to care for, which was busy enough and — if you’ve heard any of my previous podcasts, you know it was also highly unsatisfying for me, because of all the limitations of conventional medicine, and how disillusioned I was with healthcare (which is really only “sick care”), and I had long ago felt that I wasn’t really making a real difference in people’s lives. I felt like I was just handing out bandaids and putting out some fires here and there.
I also had this administrative role at my clinic and I was in an important meeting that happened every year with the regional health authority who funded us and in large part paid all our salaries. At this meeting, I was essentially being raked over the coals because the physicians in our clinic weren’t “seeing enough patients” each day.
Our numbers weren’t high enough to justify our salaries, and basically the powers-that-be were telling me that we were going to need to see more patients per day and that they didn’t really care what the nature of those visits was. They weren’t concerned with outcomes, like how much we were helping people, they were only concerned with the metric of number of visits per physician per day.
I was so angry.
I knew we had a high proportion of mental health issues that we were dealing with every day at the clinic and we are very underserviced in terms of psychiatry. It came down to the family doctors to handle these mental health cases, which take a lot more time than, say, a visit for a sore throat.
When people are literally crying in your office, or talking about their suicidal thoughts, you can’t exactly kick them out and say, “Sorry, but we’re done here. I need to keep moving and see more patients.”
I tried to explain this to the administrative poobahs in that room. I backed it up with my own numbers — our percentages of mental health related visits — and tried to help the pencil pushers understand that we were really trying to provide an important service to our population. While we weren’t churning through as many people in the day, we were trying to meet the need of the people in our community and there were more important things than numbers.
Unfortunately, they wouldn’t listen. They didn’t care. All they wanted to know was how we were going to get our numbers up, and if we were unable to do that, then they were threatening to change our funding and payment structure.
I sat in that room feeling powerless and frustrated, when all of a sudden I got this bizarre throbbing sound and feeling in my head that I had never heard before. I thought, “Oh my god! I’m having a stroke. I’ve actually burst an aneurysm or something!”
I get migraines, but I had never had this before.
I excused myself and went to the restroom, splashed cold water on my face and tried to calm down.
Somehow I managed to return to the boardroom and stayed fairly quiet as everything wrapped up. I went back to my office, took a migraine pill, and drove straight home. By the time I got back home, 15 minutes later, I had the worst migraine I had ever had, I couldn’t even see straight. I then spent the next 2 days in bed, in so much pain, throwing up, barely functional.
I went to see my own doctor, who sent me to emergency to be evaluated. As I was lying there in the CT scanning machine I had a little time to reflect.
At the end of the meeting, I remember the key stakeholders muttering about what we were going to cover next time we had this particular meeting. And saying, “Yes, when we get together next time…” and I remember just sitting there, looking at the woman who was saying these words, as my head literally sounded like it was going to explode.
I thought to myself, “I am NOT going to be in this room next time. Assuming I’m not dead at that point, I am not going to be a part of this anymore.”
I realized in that moment, if I couldn’t even convince people who were looking at me in the face, people who knew me, who I could actually speak to and explain what was broken about our system — if I couldn’t even convince them, on such a small local level, what hope was there for the system as a whole?
I could try and fight it, and give myself a stroke in the process, or I could say, “You know what? I’m choosing a different path for my life.”
I had already discovered the world of coaching, but I was only dabbling in it. I knew it. I wasn’t really committed to it. I was dipping a toe in the water, but I wasn’t fully in. I was mostly just trying to figure things out by myself, not really investing, not really taking any risk.
Once I recovered from that migraine episode, I handed in my resignation for that role.
Finally Fully Committing to my Goals
I stepped down as lead physician and then I dropped my clinical hours sharply to part-time and took a big pay cut. I decided I was going to devote significant time to actually building the career I wanted and doing the work I wanted to do.
No more time in boardrooms, or meetings, or other clinical work that didn’t light me up. It was over.
I created a document called “Exit Strategy.” I planned, strategized, created timelines, and did everything I had to do to get myself out of there permanently. I also started investing.
Instead of just secretly building a coaching business without getting any help, guidance, or mentorship, I joined a mastermind. I joined a group program. I put my money where my mouth was. And yes, I did all of this even as I was reducing my income. Those investments went on my credit card — something my husband would have been horrified to learn — but I had to. I was all in and I was finally committed.
It All Starts With a Commitment
My breakthrough came when I was at rock bottom. I was sitting there inside a CT scanner machine, and I knew this was not the way.
I didn’t know exactly how it was all going to come together, but I knew I needed to make more impact and do so in a meaningful way. I was not going to sacrifice myself to the altar of this system — the healthcare system.
Making that commitment was the mindset shift that allowed me to take positive steps every single day to pursue that goal.
It started with a commitment and a decision.
As I was lying there in that CT scanner, I had a point of no return. I was not going back to my old way of life and staying stuck any longer.
I made a decision to make a change and keep moving forward. It felt so good to finally be on the actual path of my dreams and actually taking action towards my goals, rather than just dabbling and hoping and dreaming.
You may not be at rock bottom like I was in the hospital, you might also not even hate your job, but you might feel like you’re never going to reach your full potential. You may be feeling like you’re no longer challenged in your current role, or you’re starting to feel stuck. Maybe you’re realizing that you’re not making enough money to support your family and achieve the lifestyle you really want. You have no idea what steps to take first.
Maybe you’re just a big confused mess.
That’s okay. You don’t need to know how. I didn’t know the “how” at the time.
The first step is making the commitment — You are going to do this, this is a non-negotiable, no matter what, you are going to make that dream career happen.
If you’re there, I’m so excited for you. I’m excited for you to make a non-negotiable commitment. The commitment to make change happen in your life. The commitment to start the career of your dreams.
It’s Not An Option To Fail
When you make your commitment, when you really go all in on your goals, you’re not saying, “You know, gosh it would be really nice to achieve this thing. Or, I really hope I reach this goal.”
No.
You’re saying, “I can and I will.”
Make it so it’s not an option to fail. That’s the mindset shift I want you to make.
It’s not an option to fail. It might take longer than you expect, and you might have to pivot a few times, or course correct, or learn something new, or overcome a challenge you didn’t see coming, but the point is, it’s going to happen, no matter what.
That’s what it means when a goal is non-negotiable.
If you put yourself in the way of that eventual success, the pathway will reveal itself. The “how” will reveal itself, the plan will become clear, and then you’ll learn what you need to learn as you go.
If you don’t make that level of commitment everything I teach you is just content. It’s just stuff you’re learning but you may not actually take action. And while it’s awesome to learn, you’re not going to be able to make the change that you deeply need to make if you aren’t actually taking action.
I know you want to make an impact on the world and build an amazing new career for yourself, and all of that starts with a commitment.
It wasn’t until I made that non-negotiable commitment, several years ago, that things started to shift for me, and now, of course, I’m in a totally different place.
Rescue Isn’t On the Way
It’s almost like I thought I was waiting to be rescued. On some level I had this suspicion that someone was going to come along and tap me on the shoulder and say, “Okay, Kim, we can see you’re unhappy and we’ve got everything all ready for you now — this brand new life to step into.”
But of course there was no rescue coming.
I needed to rescue myself, and I needed to make that non-negotiable commitment to myself that it was going to happen, no matter what.
After that, all the other stuff became so much clearer. I had no idea how to actually build a profitable business, rather than just the expensive hobby that I had created, but I put myself on the path, and I got the help I needed. The rest was history.
Things moved pretty fast once I made the commitment and took that first step. And that’s what I want for you!
Three Steps to Making a Lasting Commitment
There are three things I want you to do when it comes to making your own commitment. They’re very simple and super easy. You’re essentially just making the commitment to launch and grow your dream business, no matter what.
The first thing I want you to do is make a contract with yourself.
I want you to write down what your non-negotiable goal is — What is your vision? What are you committing to today?
I want you to put in writing exactly what you are committing to. Something like: “I am embarking on a journey to launch my dream business and I commit to the duration of this journey. I understand that this venture will push me outside my comfort zone. I understand that I will need to seek support, get help, and make time to work toward this goal, and I commit to doing all these things.”
Once you make the contract, I want you to sign it, and date it. This is what you’re going to review every single day. It’s your commitment that you are making to building your dream business.
I want you to remember that there is always a way and you just need to find it. You may not know exactly what that way is, right now, but that’s okay.
Tony Robbins says, “There is always a way — if you’re committed.”
There are other people out there doing what you want to do, who have the information you need. All you need to do is reach out and ask, and get the answers you need. As Marie Forleo says, “Everything is figureout-able.”
So don’t get stuck in the false narrative that you have no idea what steps you need to take, or that you don’t know how to make something happen. Honestly, that’s just an excuse that keeps you small. Of course you don’t know right now. But once you make that commitment, you’re going to go out and find out what you need to know.
The other thing I want you to do, to make your goal non-negotiable, is to find someone to keep you accountable. Find an accountability partner.
If you’re listening to this and you’re in my Facebook group or you’re inside one of my programs then reach out and find an accountability partner inside there to help keep you on track.
Reach out and say, “I want an accountability partner. I have this goal, this vision, and I need someone to help me stay true to my commitment and stay accountable — and I’ll keep you accountable to your own goal, and we’ll support each other.”
It’s hard to tackle big dreams alone. It’s so much easier when we have support and accountability, and there are definitely people out there who will help to keep you on track. They want you just as much as you want them, so go find them.
And last, I would love to hear from you! Tag me on Instagram or Facebook and let me know what your commitment is, what your dream is, and what you are going after. Share with me inside my Facebook group and I would love to hear about it. I’ll be there to cheer you on and support you, and be your accountability partner as you move forward with your non-negotiable goals.
Catapult Yourself Into Your Dream Business
If this blog resonated with you and you’re also feeling stuck inside a job or a career that just does not fulfill you anymore, I’m inviting you to join my online course, the 4-Part Formula For Replacing Your 9-5 Income With A Coaching Business You Love.
You know that you’re meant for more and you would love to create a business of your own, a coaching business that not only provides meaning and impact, but also the freedom and flexibility you crave.
Inside this free online training, I’m going to teach you my 4-part framework, my proven method for how I created a freedom-based business for myself, and how I’ve helped all my clients do the same. All you have to do is claim your seat at, and then you can be watching that training this week, and taking the next step on the path to the business of your dreams. Are you ready to start pursuing your dream career? I’d love to help you! Click here to start working with me today!
Guess what? I am now enrolling for my group coaching program, Business Academy for Coaches!
Resources & Links:
- The 4-Part Formula For Replacing Your 9-5 Income With A Coaching Business You Love (my free training)
- Business Academy for Coaches
- Health Coach Squad (my free Facebook Group)
- The best platform for your coaching practice: Practice Better
- The landing page program I recommend: Leadpages
- The email marketing system I recommend: ConvertKit
- 3 Ways To Get New Clients (my free guide): drkimfoster.com/getnewclients
N.B. some links are affiliate links.
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