258. Chase Big Goals Without Burning Out with Amanda Goetz

26:57And telling ourselves certain lies that I think specifically more so men tell themselves, which is like, well, I'm doing this for my family and actually claiming that this lights me the fuck up. I wanted to get this book out there because I'm so passionate about helping women feel less guilt in their lives. And so this lights me up. I'm not, you know, maybe it benefits my family down the line, but I'm not telling myself this like fake lie that I'm doing it for someone else and really owning and not like demonizing the fact that like, it's okay to, to want to do things that light you up and that fuel you.

27:39And that, that in the end will make me a better mother. It's so fun because my, my daughters, they like go to school and they're like, my mom has a book. Like they, like we are teaching them. If, if you want to tell your kids to go chase big dreams, but you refuse to do so, So it's a very much like do as I say, not as I do situation. So to model it is a really beautiful thing.

28:05Financial Feminist Host:Well, we're taught as women that selflessness is the goal. And I mentioned this in my book, but even the toys we're given, right? We're given, we give boys trucks and Legos and things to build. And we tell them that their benefit to society and their value is in their own critical thinking and their own ingenuity and their own ability to, you know, knock things over and get back up again. Girls are given easy bake ovens and bridal veils and dolls. Like we give a two-year-old child a little another child to take care of. Like that's insane. But we're telling girls that your value is in how selfless you are to others.

28:40Financial Feminist Host:So when women have the audacity to say, I have this big dream and yes, it might make me money that will help me be more charitable. Or yes, it might make me money or, you know, give me a platform so that I can talk about issues or take care of my family. Like all of that is great. And also I want women to just say, I want it. That's okay. You're allowed to say, I want it. I want to see what I'm capable of. Yeah. I love that. And another thing I want to, I kind of want to ask you too. It's like during that season of time where you were building, for me, I have a list of non-negotiables. There are things that I refuse to let go off by the wayside.

29:25And in those non-negotiables, I have the ideal scenario and the minimally viable scenario. So moving my body is a non-negotiable. Ideal scenario is like, oh, I get a full one-hour workout in and I am in the gym doing my thing. What's the minimally viable version of it, I get 10 minutes of a walk. Like I get outside or I go on the treadmill and I get 10 minutes of a walk. If I do either of those things or somewhere in the middle, that's a win for the day. And I have these non-negotiables again on this sliding scale, because I think as ambitious women, we have such a gold star energy. It's like, I want the A, I want the gold star.

30:06If I can't do it perfectly, why bother? And for me, it's about compounding interest. If I have non-negotiables, if I only have 20 % to give and I give 20%, then guess what? I gave a hundred percent that day of what I had. So being with my partner, having quality time with my partner is a non-negotiable. The ideal scenario is like we actually sit down and like talk and have a conversation and we maybe are intimate or whatever. Sometimes that doesn't happen. What is the minimally viable version? It's a phone-free 15-minute time before I turn on Netflix and veg out, where we actually are looking at each other and connecting and being like, how are you today?

30:53Is there anything I can be doing to support you? Whatever. we we constantly look at things as an all or nothing because if we can't be getting the gold star then why bother and it's like no that's not how compounding interest works

31:09Financial Feminist Host:we had an entire episode we released a year ago called why the all or nothing mindset is killing you and it's exactly what you just talked about we'll link it down in the show notes for anybody wants to listen but it's that idea of i either go to the gym every single day for an entire year for an hour and I sweat my ass off or it doesn't count. Or I save a million dollars and I make, I get 25 % raises every single year and I do it perfectly or I don't do it at all. And yep, I've, I've realized it in my own life of like, it doesn't count unless you're in pain or it doesn't count unless you're just, yeah, dripping in sweat or it doesn't count unless you've done it perfectly.

31:55Financial Feminist Host:And I think that is one of the most harmful things for our money, for our relationships, for our joy in our life, is we can't be thinking it's either we do it absolutely 100 % every single time, or we do absolutely nothing. And when we think about these other parts of ourselves that bring us levity, joy, novelty, exploration, we tend to reserve them for vacation or weekend. And what a high barrier to entry for things that are so easily accessible, maybe not in this multitude of a vacation, but you can find pockets of these things. And that I'm very much in the mindset of I'd rather get 2 % fun every single day than a few fun days a year.

32:59Financial Feminist Host:You have this five phase ambition cycle that so many women recognize. Can you walk us through that? Yes. Okay. So at a high level, the cycle of ambition is, okay, let's start with like you're burnt out. You're burnt out. You're completely in ashes, right? Then all of a sudden you get a little spark of something like, oh, maybe I'm going to go do this thing. And maybe it's completely different than your job. You see something that you're like, I'm going to go start a YouTube or I'm going to do something else. then you start throwing everything into it and then you hit a point where you maybe like have some friction it doesn't grow as fast as you want to or you're not actually good at the thing yeah yeah yeah so then you kind of like falter and you stumble and then you get this kind of like second inkling of like, maybe you get an email that was like, oh my God, your video helped me so much.

34:04And it lights you back up again. And then you just keep pushing and pushing and pushing until you burn out again. And then at that point of burnout, you have this next like, okay, where can I, I need to now throw myself into something else. And sometimes self-care is actually another version of our self-hatred and perfectionism. It's like, oh, I'm going to go self-care the shit out of myself. I'm going to do the 20-step skincare routine. I'm going to really focus on relaxing. But then you get that, again, the cycle feeds into itself. It's like, well, now how do I do this the best that I can? And the takeaway for me with this cycle of ambition is you will continue to repeat the cycle if you don't step off the hamster wheel and acknowledge that certain things need to be designated just for fun, just for pleasure, just for peace.

35:08And you don't have to over-optimize every single cycle that you're in.

35:14Financial Feminist Host:read me for filth that's fine um no but you're so right and even like so I'm a big reader and I don't read a lot of non-fiction I will read your book but I don't read a lot of non-fiction because my life is a non-fiction book and I'm like I just want to read my little dragon smut and be okay but the interesting thing is the last year or two I've had reading goals of how many books I want to read. And I find myself sometimes going, oh, you're behind. You said you wanted to read 40. You need to get through this book really quick. And then I'm like, well, why are you doing this? If you're just going to rush through the very process that you've said is pleasurable.

35:59Financial Feminist Host:So I still like having a reading goal because it gets my butt off my phone and it gets my ass in the chair to actually sit down and read. But I do have to check my brain when it does that of like, oh, read quicker, read quicker, do this thing, listen to this audio book while you're doing this chore. And it's like, if that actually is what I want to do, great. But if I'm just doing it because I want to be able to check it off to say I've read it, that's not helpful. That's the very thing I'm trying to do to make my life more pleasurable. And instead, I am now putting yeah, a measuring stick on it.

36:38We tie so much of our happiness to the output of the goal and not the process. Not the measuring, not the destination, isn't it?

36:47Financial Feminist Host:Yeah.

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37:17Financial Feminist Host:There's a lot of stressful things about being a business owner right now. It's not easy on any day, but it's especially not easy right now. There are so many things changing rapidly in the way I think about growing our business and the way things cost. And the truth is things are only moving faster and crazier every single day. You probably know that NetSuite, which is a business management suite, it securely connects all of your data. It's a unified suite that brings your financials, inventory, commerce, HR, and CRM into one single source of truth, trusted by over 43 ,000 customers. But NetSuite Next is the next huge leap in how businesses get things done.

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38:33Financial Feminist Host:Okay, so you talk about the five to nine in your book, and we have so many listeners who are trying to figure out how do I not only get my time back from my job that maybe I don't really like, but also how do I potentially build something for myself? So how important are those hours to getting your life back? The five to nine is such a critical time period that, and the biggest mistake most people make is, okay, I'm going to start a side hustle. And then they completely block themselves out. And they're like, I'm going to do this every night this week. And then what happens that's sustainable for maybe two weeks, three weeks.

39:18So my biggest piece of advice is if you're going to reclaim your five to nine for any part of yourself. Maybe it's to really fuel the CEO who's not getting the need for significance from work or creativity from work. If you're designating some non-work hours to that version of you, maybe it's to the version of you that wants to go on dates and find love. Maybe it's the version of you that wants to go build friendship and build community, whatever part, start small. Pick one night a week that you're going to guard with your time and communicate that. No employer needs to know what you're spending your time on, but to say, oh, every Tuesday I have a commitment, and that could just be a commitment to yourself, but starting small starts building the muscle of self-trust that you said something was important and are you going to create the boundary for it?

40:17And in the absence of information, most employers will make up their own information. So if you just start going off the grid after five o 'clock every night, some people may be like, Hey, where are you? But in my experience, if any person, whether they worked for me or it was me working for someone else, if I said, Hey, I have a commitment Tuesday nights, Thursday nights, whatever I'll be, I'll check email around 8.30 when I'm back home. If there's anything urgent, I'll jump in it there. It's almost never a problem, but it's the hiding that time is kind of the first issue because somebody is going to not understand when they have access to you.

41:00And then the second issue is you allowing other people to become the priority when you said something else in your life was the priority. Where does that come from? It usually comes from deep limiting beliefs that you will lose someone's love or attention or admiration if you're not there the second they need you. When, by the way, if that's the relationship you have with an employer, with a friend, with a partner, that's probably not a healthy one.

41:32Financial Feminist Host:Yeah. And also understanding that you saying, I have a commitment is a full sentence. You don't need to explain what the commitment is. You don't need to justify it. And I think especially with, you know, if you're a mother, if you're a woman in general, it's like, oh, because of my kids or, oh, because I'm doing this other thing. Like, I remember wanting to take a walk in the middle of the day, even 10, 15 minutes when I worked a corporate job that was in person. And I would go out and get a coffee, even though I didn't want to drink the coffee because I felt like I had to justify the break. I'm like, oh, I'm going to do something.

42:08Financial Feminist Host:And it could just be I'm walking around the block and that's fine. So yeah, it's a full sentence. Okay, so you're saying five to nine is so important. And I agree. And I love that you're also saying there's other goals besides just, you know, how do we make more money? Right. But for people who just feel too drained after work to change anything about that five to nine, how can they start without just adding another item to their to-do list? I would really, if somebody is struggling with the looking at their medium-sized screen all day to going to the couch and looking at their big screen while scrolling their small screen.

42:47If that is the state that you're in, I would really implore you to start to honor transition sequences. We used to have them built into our life, right? You go to work if you were at an office and then you'd commute home. Many of us don't have that anymore. Honoring that you need a transition sequence to get you into the mindset of whatever that thing is. And I have a whole chapter in the book about transition sequences because I can't go from work mode to mom mode cleanly. I can't go from work or mom mode into date mode cleanly. I need to build in these even 10 minute buffers that allow myself to recognize that I'm stepping into a different version of myself, acknowledge that I need to let go of the previous version character I was in, set a time parameter.

43:47Okay, I'm going to be in this version. I'm going to be in mom mode for the next two hours. And then allow myself to truly step into that. And during COVID, when I was working from home and all three kids were in the house with me, I created a commute bath where I would go take a bath at 5 p.m. every day. And I was like, guys, I'm going to go become a mommy. And they'd be like, okay, we'll see you in 30 minutes. I'd put on Bluey and I'd go take a bath because otherwise I'd been on board meetings, investor pitches. I wanted to bark Shopify percentages at them. And it's like, I needed to come back and like allow myself to soften.

44:29And when I'd come out, I'd be like, I'm in mom mode now for the next two hours. If she is in the spotlight of the movie of my life, she doesn't give a fuck what slacks are coming in. She doesn't care what emails for two hours. I'm letting this character fully be embodied in this moment and allowing myself these kind of like, it's almost like time blocking of your different versions of yourself to give you the freedom to fully be present in that mode, which I think is really hard for women because we pride ourselves as being these multitasking experts. But when in reality, when you step away from something, when you've been juggling multiple of these characters and trying to hold them in the same balance at once, you actually walk away feeling shitty because you realize you didn't give any of them your full attention.

45:20Financial Feminist Host:I just, I love what you just said of I'm becoming a mom. Like give me 30 minutes. Like it's like a costume change. It's like, I gotta go become Superman or I've got to take off Superman to be Clark Kent. Like that is a transition that takes a second. And I'm literally going to start doing that in my life. I love that. What you're also mentioning is rituals. And I think that when life gets so crazy or when you're just moving from thing to thing to thing, life gets very black and white. And I mean, quite literally, like the color dulls and you stop having things to look forward to. can you talk about the importance of rituals in our lives and why those can add moments of joy or moments of grounding when things feel so crazy?

46:14Yes. I mean, first and foremost, the power of rituals and these transition sequences allow you to fully acknowledge what you're about to do. And a lot of times when we're in a robotic state of mind, we are not acknowledging the beauty of the moment that's happening. And I have an exercise, a visualization exercise that I call the 90 year old me, which is if I'm sitting there reading a book to my kids at night, work Amanda's trying to jump in and be like, I'm going to draft an entire newsletter sequence into my brain while I'm reading good night, good night construction site. I have to then pull myself out and be like, if 90-year-old me could come in and watch this moment, what would she actually look at?

47:02And I'd be like, oh my God, Grayson's fingers are so small still. And he's still got that chameleon that he sleeps with every night. And like you start to actually say the things that are so beautiful in that moment. And I think these transition sequences, like I have a transition sequence before I go to the gym, before I'm going on a date with my partner. so I can say like, oh my gosh, in this moment, this workout, like I just lifted a little bit stronger this week or I am improving in this way or whatever. And it allows us to just like be present in the moment. Think a lot about like hiking.

47:44When you go on a hike, especially a really hard hike, you have to look down at your feet because if it's rocky terrain or big rocks, If you don't step correctly, you will roll your ankle or fall. And if we kind of go through life just constantly like one foot in front of the other, but the reason you go on a hike is to like look at the scenery of the hike around you and you stop and you have to stop and go, oh wow, we're now the like sun is hitting the trees in this way. You stop and you take it in. And so it's kind of these rituals allow you to do something very similar, which is you pause, you look around, and you're like, oh, there's some really beautiful things in this moment right now that are happening.

48:31Financial Feminist Host:So how can somebody start implementing these transitions in their life? What needs to change about their mindset? What needs to change about their calendar management? What needs to change in order for these transition sequences to happen? step one would be to just take an audit of which characters are in the spotlight right now and after you've understood which characters are maybe dominating most of the movie you start to then say okay are there other characters that i really want to write back in maybe i haven't seen my friends in a while maybe i really have not felt sexual in a while maybe there's i am not prioritizing a workout and i feel like i've written that would benefit me okay now you then say let's look and start to build this into my calendar.

49:18Putting yourself as a priority and building yourself into a calendar that you respect is such a muscle that you have to build over time. And it goes back to those traps that we fall into, urgency and significance. Is it really as urgent or significant as our nervous system feels it is? Oh my God, I got this email from somebody I have to respond to right now? Do I really? Or could it wait until you've designated this hour of time that you're at the gym to honor that? Then you allow yourself to say, okay, from 12 to five, I'm in work mode. And then I got to go into kid mode. Could I actually do 12 to 445 and put in a 15 minute walk or a 15 minute shower or bath to allow myself to say, okay, I'm aware that I'm moving into another version of myself.

50:11What is that person? What does that version of myself care about, need, love? And then I create a little ritual. What's the ritual that I'm going to do? Before I go to the gym, every single time I listen to the same song and I grab the same energy drink from my refrigerator. And it's like Pavlovian at this point. I'm like, okay, workout Amanda is like training to be like an Olympic athlete. Like I'm going in and I'm just going to like do this. And it's this awareness. And actually the last piece of it is just saying to yourself for the next X amount of time, I'm in this part of me. I'm going to enjoy being with my friends and I'm going to soak this up because these friendships matter to me.

50:53And then having that end point where you say, okay. And then afterwards I can go back to mom mode, work mode, whatever.

51:02Financial Feminist Host:Yeah. When we're talking about ambition, what is the new model that actually lets women thrive? The new model for ambition is creating seasonality without guilt. For two years after I sold my company in an equity deal, I did not, there was not a cashflow moment at that, at the sale of my company. So I had to go get a job, just a regular nine to five. And for two years, I allowed myself to take the foot off the pedal of all things career. I paid my bills and I allowed myself to be kind of in the soil growing roots that I had maybe lost a bit. And I felt a little flimsy. And during that time, I remember looking around being like, wow, everybody else is blossoming.

51:56It's so pretty. They all have petals and I'm just down here in the soil and it's not pretty. And then that hit me where it's like, no, this is beautiful because I'm getting stable. And when I grow again, it's going to be from a place of stability and strength. And so now I feel like, cool, I'm coming out of the soil now and blossoming to the point where other people can see, but I want us to acknowledge the beauty in this time in the soil just as much as we do the time in the sun.

52:31Financial Feminist Host:If hustle culture says that success equals money and status, how do you define success now? Success is multidimensional. I believe that we have to allow for success in these other parts of ourselves and celebrate the multidimensional success of every person. Whatever version of them that they are prioritizing to build up and grow, we need to celebrate that and stop creating these opposing binary constructs that are either or. When you think about women listening, my last question for you is what is one mindset shift you want women listening to make about ambition this year? The biggest mindset shift I would want all women listening to take on this year is permission to do something just because they fucking want to.

53:34if you want to go make money don't you don't have to over explain if you want to prioritize your sexuality you don't have to over explain and create this perfect instagram uh post about why you're embracing it's just like you have permission to prioritize whichever part of you for however long with no explanation and just because you solely want to.

54:01Financial Feminist Host:I love it. You know, I've been following you for so long and been inspired by you. And we finally got to meet a couple months ago and I loved hearing you speak. You were absolutely phenomenal. I'm so excited for this book. Tell people where they can find it. Oh my gosh. The feeling is so mutual. I remember I was like fangirling when you were going to be in the green room with me. So, um, I was so excited. Um, okay. So people can go to toxic grit.com to check out the book. It's everywhere. Books are sold Barnes and Noble target, um, Amazon, and they can follow me at the Amanda gets on Instagram or my newsletter, Amanda gets.com, um, for more of this every week in their inbox.

54:43Financial Feminist Host:I love it. And please, if you can, everybody order from your local independent bookstore, they need you. I need your support. Thank you. Thank you for your work. Thank you. Thank you so much to Amanda for joining us. Her book, Toxic Grit, is out today wherever books are sold. And we would love if you supported an independent bookstore when you buy her book. Thank you, as always, Financial Feminist for being here. Thank you for supporting feminist media. We will see you back here very soon. Thank you for listening to Financial Feminist, a Her First 100K podcast. For more information about Financial Feminist, Her First 100K, our guests and episode show notes, visit financialfeministpodcast.com.

55:22Financial Feminist Host:If you're confused about your personal finances and you're wondering where to start, go to herfirst100k.com slash quiz for a free personalized money plan. Financial Feminist is hosted by me, Tori Dunlap. Produced by Kristen Fields and Tamisha Grant. Research by Sarah Shortino. Audio and video engineering by Alyssa Midcalf. Marketing and operations by Karina Patel and Amanda LeFue. Special thanks to our team at Her First 100k.

56:01Financial Feminist Host:A huge thanks to the entire Her First 100K community for supporting our show.

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