Okay. Welcome back to Become a Calm Mama. I'm your host. I'm Darlyn

Childress, and this is part two of our Goals

series. In this series, I'm helping you figure

out what you want to create in your life, what are your goals, and how

to make those possible. So last week we talked about

defining your goal, being specific, trying to figure that

out, and if you aren't sure if doing a dream download to figure out

what your goals are. So hopefully you've gone back and listened to that

episode. Now, this episode is about defining the

obstacles that are inevitable whenever you are achieving

something large, some kind of big dream you have, or even if

it's a small dream, but whatever you're doing, it takes effort,

of course, but there is also going to be things that come up along the

way. Now, for me, I've been talking about writing this book. I

have been wanting to achieve this goal for over

12, 13 years and have made some progress, but I

haven't actually published the book. So for me, I know I have some

evidence, I have some experience of what

obstacles have come up along the way that have

prevented me from achieving my goal. So I want to talk

about some of those obstacles, just generically, which obstacles come up for

all of us, and then giving you some really tangible

strategies to help you overcome those obstacles. I have

created a Goals workbook that includes a lot of the tools that I'm

going to talk about on this podcast episode. You can get a copy

of that workbook on my website under the

Resources tab. It's a free workbook that you can

download. All you have to do is go to my website,

calmmamacoaching.com and and you will see the

guide and you will be able to click on that, download it,

and you can follow along if you want. Or if you're listening to this and

you love all of these tools, go ahead and pop on the website, get

that guidebook or that workbook for yourself, and then you can

complete all of these different tools and strategies and exercises

and things like that. Okay, So I kind of have thought about five

obstacles that come up when we are trying to achieve a

goal. So the first is belief or

mindset. The second is

knowledge, not having the knowledge or the ability to

achieve your goal. The third is time. Obviously, we're going

to need time to focus on our goal and to make our goal

happen. So if we don't have enough time, that's definitely an obstacle.

Another obstacle is unexpected life situations,

things that come up that are unplanned. Those are inevitable as well.

So I want to talk about that obstacle, and then the last one is just

plain old quitting. That is the major

obstacle of achieving your goal, is not continuing to

work on it. Okay, So I want to break these down for you and then

give you some tools. And like I said, go to the website, download the workbook,

so that you can follow along if you want to do any of these exercises,

because I'm going to go through them kind of fast. You'll be able to track

what I'm saying just by listening. But if you want more support

and you want, like, an actual workbook that walks you through each

of these exercises, you're going to want to go to the website and get a

copy of the workbook. Okay? So belief is the one I wanted to start

with because it has a lot to do with mindset and how you

think about yourself, how you think

about your goal, how you think about what's possible.

Those thoughts. Thoughts are going to create

feelings inside of you, and those feelings

are going to drive your action. So, for example, if

I have a belief that I

am going to write a terrible book, right? That if I have a thought

like, this book is going to be a failure, this book is going to be

terrible. I'm not good enough. I don't know what I'm doing.

I. I'm a loser. If I have negative thoughts

about myself or my ability, then it's gonna

be really hard for me to achieve my

goal. If I have negative thoughts about me that, like,

oh, I talk a big game, but I don't do what I say,

or I've tried many times, and I'm always failing. Of course

I'm gonna fail again. Those kinds of thoughts are.

Are going to create a challenge, achieving your goals, for

sure. I'm going to give you three different exercises that will help

you get over that negative mindset, that

negative self talk, that disbelief, that lack of

confidence that you have in your ability to achieve your

goals. So the first thing I love is

writing an I love you letter. I actually really do this

often. And essentially I sit down and I

write an encouraging letter to myself as if my best friend

is writing it, or as my core self, my purest

self, my self that is full of love for me,

right? So if you think about internal family systems, we've talked about that on the

podcast. That's your unburdened,

unwounded core self, that deeper

part of you that is full of love and hope

and joy, right? That pure self.

If you can Tap into her and you can write a letter to

yourself. From that energy, you will be able

to overcome some of the obstacles. I was actually

thinking it might be fun for you to listen to a letter

that I wrote to myself when I started to

write this book a couple of years ago. And I wrote my book in

2016, and then I didn't revisit again until, like,

2020. And. And then I worked on creating the

Calm Mama course and all of my programs, so

I got distracted. I didn't go back to the book. I wrote a little bit

in 2022, and then I didn't touch it again till recently.

So what I did in 2022, though, is I wrote a love letter to myself,

and then I opened up the document in 2025, and then

I see this letter to me

that is from me to me. And

it says, dear darlin, you've

already written this book. You wrote it in your heart when you lived it.

You wrote it when you wrote your first draft. You wrote it when you made

your first handbook and your second handbook and your third handbook.

You wrote it when you taught Kalmama summer camp. You wrote it when you

taught Kamama school in the fall and again this winter.

You've written this book. In every post and email you've sent. You

have scribbled this book in the heart of every mama you've ever worked with.

Girl, it's done. And it's amazing. It's so good.

You can't imagine how much good you're going to do. Can you

imagine if you had your book when Lincoln was 4? Can you imagine what

it would have meant to you to know you could get out of your rage

and disappointment and confusion if someone laid out a plan for you?

Honey, this is a gift. You are changing lives. The

mama that picks up this book or downloads it on her Kindle or listens as

she waits for her kids to get out of soccer practice is going to feel

so healed and loved and understood. You are going to do that

for her. Stop depriving her of this. Stop hiding.

She needs you. She's waiting. She's ready. Are you?

I think you are. Isn't that amazing? I found that letter three

years after I had written it to myself. And it just

gave me so much hope and joy. And I'm sure

I felt that when I wrote it originally. And it was this beautiful

gift for me to come back to and see that was written there.

I wanted to share that with you because I do think writing these I love

you letters, writing A letter to yourself, as if you are your

highest self, your best friend, can be really powerful and healing.

Okay, so the last strategy that will help you with your mindset

is all about creating an evidence

log. So this is one of the ideas that I have about

myself or you or other people, right?

That we think something is impossible.

We don't think it's possible for us to achieve our goals.

And then when we are thinking it's

not possible to achieve our goals, we end up looking for

evidence of that being true. That's what cognitive bias

ultimately is. It's the way that our brains work

in that we look to. The third

little exercise that I love to do is creating

an evidence log. So what do I mean by that? The way that our

brains work is that we like to be right. Our brain

is biased to our own beliefs.

Now, what do I mean by that? So we have this thing called cognitive

bias. I like to believe that the things

that I believe are correct and true. And what I

do is I build evidence so that I can support

my belief. If I have a negative belief,

like I can't achieve my goal, then my brain is going

to look for evidence of that being true. It's going to look

for evidence of all the times I've tried to do this and I failed.

It's going to look for evidence of me not being good enough. It's going to

look for proof that I'm not as smart or. Or whatever

belief I have about myself. I'm going to look for

proof because I like to be right. My brain likes to be right, and yours

does too. That's what cognitive bias is. If I have a

positive mindset, then my brain is going to look for ways

that my belief is true in the positive. So if I think,

oh, look, I can achieve my goals,

then I'm going to look for evidence of that being true. When you

want to shift from a negative to a positive mindset, you have to

work pretty hard to build evidence that the thing that

you want to achieve is possible. So looking at

this idea of an evidence log, if I have a belief that I want to

write a book, I want to lose 10 pounds, I want to create a peaceful

home, I want to have a better marriage. I want to start a business.

I want to grow my business. I want to. I want to make $10,000 more

a year. I want to, whatever, keep my kitchen clean.

I want to make healthy dinners. Like, whatever your goal is can

be grandiose, can be small, doesn't matter. If you believe

that it's possible. And you start to look for

evidence of that being possible, you will be more

likely to achieve it. So how do you look for evidence?

You. You look back at your life and you look at ways that

you have proven to yourself that you

can do things. So, for example, when I want to write this

book and I want to publish it, I am

deciding that it's possible and I'm going to use evidence of the

past. Evidence of times when I've wanted something in the past

and I achieved it. That's my evidence log.

So I wanted a podcast, now I have it. I wanted a

profitable business, now I have it. I wanted to raise emotionally healthy

kids. I did. I wanted to improve my marriage. I have. I wanted to

eat healthy. I do. Looking for. And I know this is true

of you, of course, you are an incredible woman. I'm not

in any way doubting that. Like it is 100% possible

for you to achieve your goals. I believe that. And

I know that there's evidence of you having achieved things in the

past. I wanted to graduate from college. I did. I wanted to take care of

my mom as she was dying of Alzheimer's. I did. I

wanted to care for my nephew after my sister died. I did.

I have a lot of evidence of me being

a person who's capable of achieving her goals.

And I really believe that you are too. But you have to

believe it. And the way you do that is by building an evidence log.

So all that means is you sit down with a piece of paper and you

write down ways that you have achieved goals in the past. Or

if you have imposter syndrome like I'm not smart enough

or I'm not good enough, other people are better than

me. Then find evidence of you being good at what

you do. If you want to start selling

screen printed T shirts on Etsy, you probably need to

have some belief that you are somewhat creative, that you have a

good eye, that you are able to learn new things, that

you know how to ask for help.

You know how to stick to it. Look at the

places you've stuck to it in the past, look at other goals.

So you're looking at the past to build an evidence

like log that you have enough experience

or skill or ability or history of

achieving goals or making things happen for yourself.

You can also look at yourself as a person and be really positive

about who you are. I am a person who doesn't quit, even if

I've quit before I've come back to it. I am a person

who Likes to work hard.

I'm a person who, whatever, whoever you are, whatever

personality traits you have, whatever characteristics you have

that make it possible for you to achieve the specific goal

that you want. Maybe you want to be a fitness

instructor and you are saying, I really enjoy fitness

and that's really good evidence that I'm probably going to be good

at this, is that I enjoy it. So you can

just decide that you are going to be good enough and then look

for evidence of that being true. So it's an exercise

in getting your brain to like think about things differently. It's a way to

move from that negative belief to positive belief.

So our big obstacle about belief, we have three

exercises that you can do. One, write an I love you letter.

Two, go back to your why. Three, create

an evidence log. Those are really

powerful exercises to move out of negative

self belief, move out of imposter syndrome and get into

some action. Because these obstacles, they are the

actual problems with achieving our goals really.

So that first one is belief. The second obstacle

is knowledge or ability. Like, honestly, sometimes you just don't know

what to do. You don't know how to make the thing happen. You don't actually

have the training. So when I think about when I wanted to

grow my business, even just start my business, I had to

go get parent education. And I did. I got trained in a bunch

of parenting philosophies. I went, invested money, invested

time, flew to Denver, you know, invested six months in this course,

invested money. I actually did get the education

that I needed. I took courses and I trained with

mentors and I did the work I had to figure

out. I had to learn the thing that I

wanted to do. I had to learn it right? And then after a few years

of teaching parent education, I recognized there was a gap in my

coaching in that I didn't understand how to overcome

mindset enough. So then I became a life coach and did my

certification with that and invested time and money and nine months

of time, right? Because I needed to get education, I

needed to get experience. I

wanted to start this podcast. I didn't

know how to start a podcast. And so I had to look online, I had

to research, I had to invest money in a

microphone and in a program and take a little online course.

So the thing is that sometimes we really don't have the

knowledge or the ability. And that means we have to invest in

ourselves, invest in education, reading a book, taking

a course, hiring a coach, right? Asking your friends,

putting yourself out there, being vulnerable, being like, I don't know what

I'm doing and I'm gonna get some help. You can Even just ask ChatGPT

at this point, right? So if you don't know how to achieve what

you want or you don't have enough education yet, that's fine.

But that is an obstacle and you will have to overcome that obstacle.

I'm thinking about when my son wanted to do the screen, the

selling T shirts, and he really didn't know how to screen print. I

think that's what it's called. And so, you know, he had to watch a lot

of YouTube videos, trial and error, the garage, trying to, like, you know,

be in there and working through all the different

lack of knowledge that he had and, you know, trying to get to the

other side to achieve the thing. Now he

quit. He was also 16, so. So that is one of the

obstacles. Quitting is an obstacle. It is

probably the number one obstacle of achieving your goals is to stop working

on them. I want to remind you that you can always

unquit whenever you want. So if you quit a goal,

you can just go back to it. It's fine. It's not that big of a

deal. It's not a big deal to quit and then say, oh, well, I quit,

but now I'm going to go back. I love quitting and I

love starting again. So it's fine. Like I said earlier,

I wrote this book in 2016, and then I wrote again in 20,

21, 22, and then I come back in 25. Like, I've quit so

many times. And the reason why I know it's important

I can go back to my why is because I keep not quitting.

I go back and start again. So quitting is a big obstacle,

but you can always overcome it by not quitting. There you go.

Or starting again. Okay, so we have

our knowledgeability gap, right? Our obstacle, we

have our belief obstacle, we have our quitting obstacle. Now we

have time. Time is a huge

obstacle, actually. And we're going to talk more

about it next week when we get into the action plan. But in the

workbook I wrote, I created, like a time audit. This is how

I like to figure out what I need to do

in order to make my goal happen. And it really is figuring out

when I'm gonna do it. It's very practical. But I think

people don't often talk about it. When they talk about goal setting is

like, how much time either is it

gonna take or how much time do you have

to reach your goal? So, for example, let's just Take exercise.

Imagine you do the time audit, which is essentially just

looking at your week or looking at the course of a couple of weeks and

writing down what you do when and noticing if

there's any chunks of time that are available, that you have

discretionary time. It's like a time budget kind of.

Or if there's stuff that you have to get rid of in order to create

time. So time is a limited resource in that we only have

168 hours a week. That's what is true.

So you can either look at your goal

and say, okay, how much time is it going to take me to make that

happen? Or how much time do I have

and when can I be working on my goal?

So I noticed that for me, one of my obstacles

when it comes to writing my book has been

time, but really concentrated time, like a chunk of time

where I can do deep work and deep focus. Because I

want to write the book in a way that makes sense to the person who's

reading it, right? So I need to be really deeply thinking about it. And if

I'm trying to write my book in between coaching calls

or after I've been working with a private client or in my

group program for four hours, five hours, and and then step

into the book, my brain is fatigued, I'm too tired. I only have a

couple of hours left in the day and I don't really get it done. Also,

I notice that if I'm focused on recording podcast episodes,

I end up not having enough time or brain

capacity to focus on the book. It's like,

not only is my resource limited in terms of my time, but my

mental capacity is also limited. I only have a

certain amount of brain capacity to focus.

So I have to look at my schedule and my

lifestyle and all the other things I have demands on me. Making

dinner, grocery shopping, managing the house, managing my kids.

I have a lot of different responsibilities in my

life besides just sitting around working on my goals all the time. I have

my own fitness goals. I have a lot of other goals. So

when I started to take a look this past six months of like, how

am I going to achieve my goal of publishing this book

in the time that I have available? And I did a time

audit, I looked at it and I realized that I don't

currently with my coaching practice, the size

it was, did not have any time plus the

podcast demand. So here's what I did, and you guys are going to

notice this because you listen to the podcast, is that I

looked at my time audit. I Realized that the podcast

was a time drain that took maybe four to five

hours a week, that I needed to have that time and

that mental capacity to focus on the book. So what I've done is I've

made a decision to take 10 weeks off of the podcast of

recording new episodes so that I have 10 weeks

to work on the book. I. I think it'll take me about 10

weeks to get a solid draft to my editor. That means that I

had to look at my podcast and

decide, how can I take a break from 10 weeks

while still giving you the audience great content?

So what we did, what my assistant and I did, is that we decided

to do a best of series and do a stop yelling series.

So it's going to be 10 episodes that are just

focused on how to stop yelling at your kids. And that's gonna kick off

in January, and you're gonna have 10 weeks of

basically re releases, but they're put together

in a specific order to help you get the result that you want,

which is stop yelling. So if that's one of your goals, amazing. You're gonna get

the knowledge and ability to stop yelling, you know, using the

podcast, which is incredible. Thinking about 10 weeks of time, you're like, wow, in

10 weeks, I'll stop yelling at my kids. Looking at my schedule and realizing the

podcast was taking all that time, what really meant that I needed to make a

change in the work. And that means saying

no to something. That means taking something off my plate in order to

add something to my plate. When people make up goals

and they start achieving them, they often think they're going to

achieve that without any cost, without taking away

anything, without. Without taking any responsibility away. But you do

not have infinite amount of time and energy and mental

capacity. You do have limitations. Those are real obstacles. So

saying yes to your goal means sometimes saying no.

Other things I've realized is that I have to make meals really

simple. I have to be able to work up until 5 o' clock and then

I'm going to be tired, so I'm not going to be able to just go

right into, like cooking dinner and all that. And so I need to have meal

prepping and meal planning and investing that time

on the weekend so that I have more energy on the

weekdays so that I can focus on this book. Another choice I made

was to not assign any new clients, because taking your

consultations, which I love, means that

I am meeting you, getting to know you,

you're on my calendar. I book you into spots

on my schedule, and I recognize that

that isn't going to work if I'm working on the books.

I can't be adding new clients to my workload, to my roster,

because I want to do my best with every client that comes.

And if I have new clients while I'm distracted, it won't be helpful.

So that was another choice, is to really kind of start a wait list

for new clients. And then the third thing I did in the business was

to close down my group program. I recognize

that what I want to achieve with the book is

helping people become calm and raise emotionally healthy kids,

that I could have a bigger impact on the world

if I wrote this book instead of continuing with my

group program. So I closed that Calm Mama club

and pivoting away from that group program while I

create this new product, this new book.

So that that way I send that out into the world has the impact it

has. And then we'll see what is created, what kind of community I want to

create around that afterwards. But managing

something while creating something new wasn't going to work

for my mind. I hope you see that when you make a decision to have

a goal, you take a look at your resources,

at your availability of time

and energy and mental capacity. Those are

limited. And you may have to decide, okay, what

can I say no to? Or what do I need to change? What do I

need to get rid of in order to add this new thing?

Now, you're not getting rid of it forever. It's just while you're working on the

goal, while you're doing that heavy lift,

eventually whenever you do something new and you achieve the goal,

it becomes easier and easier to manage it. It becomes part of

your lifestyle. I think about the podcast, like I just said, that it takes

time and energy from me, and it does, but it's something that in the

beginning took a lot more and I didn't know what I was doing and I

was confused by it. And then once it became part of my life, I knew

where to plug it in. And you know how much time it took. And it

was easy. It still is. I just want to take a break so that I

have those four to five hours a week to focus on the

book. And then when that's done, the book's done. I'll go back

to recording new episodes. And I can't wait. I'm so excited because there'll

be so much new content and exciting things that come after I

create this book. So recognizing sometimes you're going to have to say no to things.

I remember When I first started working more regularly in my

coaching practice and I noticed that I was still trying to have lunch

with my friends or like have appointments during the school

day or during the work week. And I recognized like, I can't,

I can't do that anymore. I'm not available for phone calls with my girlfriends, I'm

not available for lunches. I work and that's my life. And

then I spend the afternoons, you know, when the kids were in school, I'd spend

the afternoons with them and then the evenings, I was usually too tired to do

anything. So when I was building my business and raising my kids and really

busy, I did not have a ton of time for

friends. I had to be really diligent about saying no,

prioritizing my goals, which is work and raising my kids at that time,

and then recognizing when I was off balance, like, I need a girls night. I'm

going to do that on Friday night, making plans for that. It's a little bit

of yes and no. It's a little bit of moving things around

while you create the life you want, achieve the

goals that you want to achieve. The last obstacle is something

you can't really plan for because it's unexpected. Life

situations, things are going to come up that you, you

have a goal. And then like for me, I was building something.

I was just launching my group program

in the fall of 2021. That's when I launched it.

It started October 1st and then my sister

died October 6th and that was

shock and tragic and her 19 year old son came to live

with us. So that was a big unexpected thing that

happened. And when I think about, wow, why didn't I write my book in

2022? I'm like, well, of course I didn't write it because

I launched the podcast, which is incredible. I stuck with

the group program, which is incredible. And I had my 19

year old nephew live here who was grieving and raising my own

kids and, and building a business. It was an intense time of my

life and I wasn't gonna be writing a book then,

but I felt bad about not achieving my goal.

But now when I look back and I realize, well, obviously I needed to

focus on my kids. I needed to launch them into out of high school

and into college. I needed to get my nephew stable, I needed to grieve,

I needed, you know, I was still working on this podcast, working on the group

program. A lot was going on in 2022,

2023, Lincoln graduated from high school. 23, Sawyer

graduated. 24. I had a busy couple of years

recognizing. Yep, unexpected life circumstances

happened. Goals that I had set up for myself weren't

achievable at that time because I had other goals and I had

other life circumstances. That's okay. It's

okay. If stuff comes up and

if that goal is still really important to you, you will

have another chance to achieve it. You'll just pivot,

recommit, and not quit.

It's funny that they rhyme, right? Pivot, recommit, and not quit.

But that is kind of how you get over obstacles. So the

first one is that mindset, that belief one, those three

exercises, writing a love letter, going back to your why,

creating an evidence log. If you lack knowledge or ability,

go get some. Take a course, learn, hire a

mentor, hire a coach. And recognize that anytime you

add something new, it's going to cost you in time, energy,

and mental capacity. And you're going to have to make shifts.

Okay, Mamas, I hope this was really helpful for you.

I know that these exercises and these mindset shifts

and these tools have been really important for me in

order to achieve the goals that I have. And. And I'm actively using them

right now as I work on this big goal of publishing

my book in 2026. So I wanted you to feel really encouraged.

I want you to feel really supported. I want you to feel

like what you want is possible. And even if stuff comes

up that you can still achieve whatever it is that you want to

create, I 100% believe in you, and I

hope you believe in yourself, too. Okay, so next week we'll get into action

plan and kind of getting into the nuts and bolts of

the last two steps, which is define the plan and do

it. So doing it is probably the easiest one to

explain and the hardest one to do. Okay. These obstacles, though,

are going to come up, and hopefully this episode helps you recognize

how to overcome those obstacles. Okay, I'll

talk to you next week.