Do you have a goal that's intimidating? One that really scares you? One that scares you so much that you may even procrastinate doing it?
I'm breaking down how to use our mindset to navigate the fear that naturally comes up, and I'll show you how to use my favorite tool right now — the 90x Goal Planner, to help you do it.
When you start procrastinating, you start to get even more scared because that dream seems so big, it seems so impossible and then you never do it. You never start working towards your goal. Then one day, you're going to sit back and you are going to regret that you never took action That you never did that thing that scared you. I don't want that to happen to you and that's why I'm here today, is to talk about goal setting and tools that I have used to help me move forward. My name is Dina Cataldo, I am a coach, the host of Soul Roadmap Podcast, and what I do is help big dreamers make sure that they don't lose their dream, that they take action on it. I want to note that I don't represent Alon David, the creator of the 90x Goal Planner. I'm just a big fan of the planner. It was given to me by my coach, and I noticed a difference in how I started thinking about my goals and achieving them right away. The links in this blog are Amazon affiliate links.
The fear that comes up when we have big goals is natural. Here's why.
They are so huge that our brains have difficulty wrapping our mind around them and our brain is actually made to protect us, right? Unfortunately, it's really great at doing things like protecting us from a rabid pack of wolves, but at the same time, it keeps us from doing things that we know we really, really want. Like, we might have a giant goal, like, to climb a mountain, to run a marathon, to make a million dollars, but our brain, because it's trying to protect us, wants to keep us comfortable and when it keeps us comfortable, it also does something which keeps us in fear and that fear is what is going to hold us back. Fear is normal, fear is a good thing, right? It lets us know that our dreams are huge, that we're doing something that is going to help us grow, but it's also something that can hold us back if we're not actively staying aware of that fear and noticing what it's doing and how we can work through it. We can snap out of it if we do a few things right. So, first off, let's organize our thoughts.
How to organize out thoughts surrounding what we want
I recorded Episode #13 of Soul Roadmap podcast, and there I talk about how to discover your calling. Maybe you already know your calling. This will help you get clear though, and I've created a PDF download that you can get at this link that will help you get super clear on exactly what you want. And when I mean clear, I mean crystal clear. I want you to be able to sense it, I want you to be able to smell it, see it, taste it. This is going to help get that feeling locked into our body and the more we act from a place of already having what we desire, the more our brain relaxes into the idea and it even starts helping us get what we want.
Why do you want it?
Another thing that we can do is once we start writing down exactly what we want, is to start thinking about why we want it because when we start thinking about our why, we're also getting our brain to remember, all right, this is something that's good for us, this is something that we should be working towards and it helps keep us focused. It's funny how we start playing these little tricks on our brain and letting our brain know, “Hey, this is okay, what I'm doing is good. It's leading me towards growth, I'm not being chased by a rabid pack of wolves, I'm doing something for my future that I really want.” Once you start getting clear and once you start figuring out your why, you can start figuring out some of the things going on in your brain. So, if you're resisting any of this right now, it's that fear taking over. If you're resisting going to download that, you're resisting writing down what you want and thinking through exactly what you want, there's some fear there. What is that fear? It's time to get curious. And so that third step is to get curious about what's going on in your brain.
Ask yourself questions about your fear
Why are you scared? So there is really one thing that this all boils down to and that's that fear of being good enough and it's funny what our brain does. Our brain starts with, you know what, I'm scared because I don't know if I can do it. And then if you really start diving down, you start thinking, well , “what will my friends say? And what will my co-workers say? What will my family say?”
The real fear is, “What if they're right.”
Then, if you really think about it and ask yourself why you have that fear, the real fear is, is what if they're right? What if they're right and I can't do this? What if they're right and I just, I don't have what it takes? Well, they're not right. Your dream is your dream. It's not their dream, they may never understand it. But it doesn't matter. You're the one who lives with your regrets and do you want to be, 10 years from now, five years from now, even one year from now, regretting that you never took action? That you never started just taking one step at a time? Because that's what we're asking ourselves to do right now, is take one step.
How the 90x Goal Planner helps you move through this fear
Let's talk about my favorite tool right now. The 90x Goal Planner was actually given to me as a part of a coaching program I'm a part of with Jim Fortin and I respect Jim Fortin greatly, so if he tells me to use something, I am going to use it.
You can get your own copy of the 90x Goal Planner by clicking here.
I started using it and I recognized some resistance, I didn't really want to dive in. And so I went through that same curiosity that I just walked you through in step three, which was, okay, why am I resisting it? What's coming up for me when I am failing to use this planner on a daily basis? And I recognized those exact same fears starting to come up and once we bring some awareness to what's going on in our brain, we can actually start breaking that down and it dissolves. The awareness part of it is a big deal; even having this planner and not using it is a big deal because it's showing you where it is that you have some blocks and some things that you need to think through.
In the video, I walk you through these pictures as I show them, but here I'll post clearer photos for you of a few of the key features I love.
I want to emphasize that the 90x Goal Planner is more than a day planner. I don't want you to think that this is something that is going to be your Google calendar or it's going to be something where you're scheduling your dentist appointments and you have all these things that you have to do. No. This tool is specifically targeted at your goals because what you want to do is focus in on those goals, so that you can break them down step-by-step. And one of the things that holds us back is having this huge goal and not knowing how to get there because we're not taking that step back, we're not taking that bird's eye view of what we need to do to get to where we want to go. And what the 90x Goal Planner does is break that down. So, if you have a one year goal of, let's say, writing a book, well, that book doesn't just all happen at once, right? You have to write the book, you have to think of ideas, you need to create the space in your life in order to do that, maybe you need to have some creative outlets and some relaxation outlets to help you work quicker, better, easier. So that it flows. Those are things that you need to incorporate into your life. So, for example, one of the things that the 90x Goal Planner does is break down why, the why behind your goals.
So, let's say you have some really big plans that you have that require some thought, right? So, in this example that I'm going to show you, the goals are earning some money, earning $100,000. He's very specific about it. You want to be specific with your goals, you don't want them to be really general, like, you know, I want a lot of money. Like, this is I will earn $100,000 from a combination of new contracts, a Kickstarter campaign, and new strategic investments. I am easily going to buy a home in Point Loma. I want it to be, and then fill in the blank. So, it goes through his top five goals, breaking them down and then breaking down the why. Why this particular goal, right? Like, why this goal? And the reason you're doing that is to start getting your brain to practice, practice breaking down what you want into the why. It's much easier for us to work from that why pulling us forward than just having the goal.
Here's what that looks like: 
Let the why pull you forward towards your goal. And one of the things that I really enjoy about this book is that you're also self-coaching yourself and every single day, you're self-coaching yourself because you are reminding yourself of the why you are doing things, what you are doing and then breaking them down into really, into really doable goals. Alright, so, you're re-writing your goals and you're re-writing your actions as you move forward. So, whatever your 90 day goal is, to write three chapters and have them completed, edited, reviewed by somebody, maybe at the same time, you want to make some networking connections because you know that you're eventually going to want to publish this book. Then you want to come back and you want to revisit this. This is something that you do everyday. So, here is an example of what my goals are for the next few weeks. I re-wrote my goals.
I want to create an outline for an entire course and flesh it out, okay? I've already got some of that done, but I clearly have more to do. I am prospecting for high-quality podcast guests so that listeners of Soul Roadmap will love them. And then I'm also batching them so that I have an opportunity to have more time in my own business and that is going to help me. So these are just my goals here and then I also take action on them and so I want to make sure that I'm writing down exactly what I'm going to do to complete those. When you're going through this, you want to make sure that you're re-visiting these pages. And David Alon does this for you, he breaks down this 90x Goal Planner so that you're continually re-visiting your goals and when you're re-visiting them, you're starting to solidify them in your brain.
This is what that looks like:
So what do I need to do in order to be successful with my goals? Well, in addition to having the 90 day breakdown, he breaks them down further into 30 day goals and then breaks them down further into one week goals and then into single day goals.
Here's what the 30 day overview looks like: 
Now I'll show you what a single day goal looks like. This is what I want to do. So, this is my day 36. On the left is how I'm planning my day to focus on 5 actions I can take towards my 5 main goals. Below is an overview of my day. I make sure I'm fitting in time for self-care, etc. On the right is a FollowDo section where you can write your follow ups/to do that either didn't get done today or that need additional actions taken. Below that, I use the notes section to write my observations during the day. What worked, and what didn't work? Where did I hit resistance? Did I have fear surrounding one of my goals? Why? Why do I feel I did/didn't do what needed to get done that day? This is the place to get curious. I try not to be too hard on myself. Life happens.
I wanted to share that with you because this tool has been really essential in getting me to understand some of the resistance that I'm feeling. And so understanding that that's normal and understanding that there are tools out there for you to work through them is essential for making sure that you reach your goal because dreams are great, taking action on them is essential.
What are your big goals?
Tell me what your big goals are, tell me in the comments. What kind of fears do you have? What comes up for you? Does anything that I've just said resonated for you? And if you have a track for staying on point, for making your goals happen, what is it? Do you have one? And it's okay if you don't, I mean, I didn't start out having all of these processes for myself and being able to work through everything just overnight, this is something that has taken years for me to learn and experience how it works for myself. This is not something that we're taught in school, it's not something that we are ever even expected to learn.
A little bit about my story is that I was always a high-achiever and I always knew I wanted something better because I grew up in a really low-income household, I didn't grow up in great neighborhoods, and I didn't like feeling poor.
It's a very interesting feeling to have when you don't feel comfortable in your own skin and you don't feel like you're wearing nice enough clothes or you smell like cigarette smoke and you have all these self-doubts already because you're a young kid and all of these other things that are around you, these circumstances, they don't feel like they're within your control. And the one thing that I knew I had control over was my education and how well I did in school and whether or not I got into a good college and whether or not I studied hard for the LSAT and whether or not I got into Law School and whether or not I got a great law job after Law School. That's what I had control over, at least in my mind, that is what I thought. I never thought outside of that because that was my goal the whole time, was to continue to be educated and to continue to learn enough so that I could eventually earn enough to not feel poor. That was my whole goal.
But once I had all of that, I could take the next step and figure out, okay, well what now? I didn't really think about the circumstances I was also creating that I did not want.
The 50-70 hours working on trials and being in court all day and being in that constant stress bubble of being churned into a law firm, you know, it does not feel good. It was not something that I really felt good about and it also led to some health complications, so I wanted to make sure that I was treating myself the way I knew I needed to treat myself. That took a lot of time and part of that had to do with creating these long-term goals and going into these four steps I'm about to review with you. So, the very first thing that you want to do is build awareness, right?
If you don't know those goals, then it's important that you start going through the work of doing, doing the work so that you can learn what those goals are. Writing down exactly what it is that you want, I mean, picture it, smell it, taste it, I mean, I want you to live this dream because you're getting that into your body to move through that fear.
Your body's getting used to that, your brain's getting used to that image of reaching this goal that you have and it helps dissolve the fear. You also want to make sure that you are getting curious, that you're asking yourself where these fears are coming from, why you're procrastinating. And if you know that fear, tell me in the comments. This is something that we need to work on daily because we hit resistance daily.
Once you start recognizing that resistance and naming that fear, you can start working through it and you can start to dissolve it. And then take a tool, a tool like the 90x Goal Planner is something that is essential if you need to organize your thoughts. And we all need to organize our thoughts, we all need to have an action plan because if we don't take action, we're going to regret it. When I talked to you at the beginning, that very real feeling of fear, of having this huge goal and not having an idea of how to make it happen, a tool like the 90x Goal Planner helps you break it down from the 90, from the bigger, it could be a five year plan, and then you break that down even further into one year, and you break that down even further into 90 days and from that 90 days to 30, and from 30 to your week and from that week to your day.
Having something that organizes your thoughts, that gives you that bird's eye view of what's going on in your life to get you where you want to go is essential if you want to design the life you want. Not the one that your friends think you should have, not the one that your parents think you should have, the life that you think you should have. So, once you've done that, once you have started to do the work, you are going to start to dissolve that fear.