I’ve always loved goal-setting — probably the Capricorn in me:)) — but a few months ago I started noticing a pattern that made me deeply uncomfortable: how quickly I would either burn out or completely freeze when trying to hit my weekly or monthly goals, even though on paper everything looked reasonable and well thought out.

The cycle was almost always the same. I would plan everything during a moment of peak motivation, feeling clear, focused, and convinced that this time it would be different. And then life would happen. I’d get sick, skip the 5am club (I feel that I’m not alone here:)), miss a deadline, or simply have a week where my energy wasn’t where I expected it to be — and suddenly my brain would decide that all progress was gone.

I would procrastinate and start telling myself, “By now I should be further,” while completely ignoring everything I had actually accomplished up until that point.

What I eventually realized is that most plans don’t fail because we’re undisciplined or unmotivated. They fail because they’re built on optimism rather than reality. A plan shouldn’t assume that you’ll always be in your best state. It should leave space for being human, for getting tired, for having off weeks, and for life interfering when you least expect it.

Being realistic doesn’t kill ambition. If anything, it protects you from anxiety, frustration, and that exhausting relationship with yourself where no matter how much you do, it never feels like enough.

One of the most grounding insights that helped me reframe this came from Teresa Amabile, a professor at Harvard Business School, who studied how knowledge workers actually make progress. Her research showed something surprisingly simple: progress isn’t driven by how ambitious your goals are, but by whether you feel a sense of forward movement on a daily basis.

People with big, impressive goals but no daily feeling of progress tend to burn out quickly, while people who break things down into smaller, clearer steps might move slower, but they stay consistent and, in the long run, go much further.

There’s an important psychological layer here that often gets overlooked. A goal that isn’t broken down into visible, achievable wins doesn’t feel motivating. It feels heavy. Your nervous system doesn’t experience it as opportunity — it experiences it as pressure. That was exactly the trap I kept falling into.

But the deeper reason most plans collapse has very little to do with discipline, motivation, or time management. It has everything to do with identity.

BJ Fogg, a Stanford professor who researches behavior design, explains it clearly: people don’t fail their goals — they fail the new identity those goals demand. Saying “I want to make $500k” isn’t just a financial decision. It implies becoming a different version of yourself, someone who thinks differently, prices differently, makes decisions differently, and holds a different level of responsibility.

And the brain doesn’t love unfamiliar versions of you. It sees them as risky. So it protects you by pulling you back toward what feels known and safe, often through procrastination, hesitation, or quiet self-doubt that looks rational on the surface.

I saw this very clearly in my own business. For a long time, I undercharged for my marketing services. As many of you know, I run a company called Aliiiens — Brand Venture Lab — and this wasn’t because I lacked experience, capability or my goal wasn't clear. In reality, my team and I were often overqualified for the work we were delivering.

The real issue was psychological. I hadn’t fully stepped into the identity of someone who charges at that level. I was still operating from an older version of myself that felt more comfortable being “very good” than being “expensive.” That pattern lived in my head for years, and only when I became aware of what was actually happening — and consciously allowed myself to adopt a new identity — did things begin to change.

There’s another layer here that feels especially important to mention, particularly for women. Brené Brown’s research on perfectionism shows that it’s rarely about achievement. It’s about approval. Many of us set impossible goals because, on some level, we’re trying to prove that we deserve our place, our success, or our voice.

But your goals are not your value. You don’t need to earn your seat at the table. You’re already here.

And then there’s comparison — the quiet killer of progress that rarely gets addressed honestly. You scroll Instagram and see someone launching their third business, hitting six figures, or buying their dream home, while you’re still refining your pricing or figuring out your next move.

What we forget is that someone else’s month twelve might be your month three, and comparing those two moments is guaranteed to drain your energy from the only thing that actually matters: your next step. The women you admire didn’t skip the messy months – we ALL have them, but not everything meant to be shared. 

One of the most helpful shifts I’ve made in recent years comes from James Clear’s idea of focusing on systems rather than goals. Instead of constantly asking myself whether I hit a specific outcome, I ask whether the system I’m using actually supports my life and energy.

If the plan was to show up seven days a week and I showed up three, that isn’t failure — it’s information. Maybe three days is my sustainable rhythm right now, and three consistent days will always beat seven days of burnout followed by two weeks of nothing.

So instead of the motivation–crash–shame cycle, I now do something much simpler. Every Sunday, I ask myself what worked, what didn’t, and what one small thing I’m adjusting next week. 

Some weeks, “what worked” is simply that I showed up even when it wasn’t perfect — and that counts more than we like to admit.

One last thing that doesn’t get said enough: you’re allowed to change your goals. Not because you failed, but because you learned. Adjusting isn’t quitting, and pivoting isn’t weakness. It’s clarity and it shows that you are able to listen to yourself and you know what you want. 

So as we’re planning the next quarter, let’s all try something simpler together. Let’s pick one goal — not five — and ask ourselves what the smallest meaningful version of that goal actually looks like, who we’re becoming as we move toward it, and where our identity might still be catching up with our real ability. And let’s remember that none of us are doing this alone.