More Than Anxiety

Ep 106 - Ambitious Enough: Small Goals Change Lives

• Megan Devito • Episode 106

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Feeling overwhelmed by the pressure to do more and be more? In this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast, I'm taking a look at the word "ambition" and challenging the conventional notion of what it means for you and what you want to experience in your life.

When you're overwhelmed, stressed, or anxious setting goals can feel impossible.

Discovering your core values and aligning your goals and actions with them helps you set goals that are important to you. 

I'm sharing practical strategies for managing overwhelm, starting with small, achievable steps, making self-care non-negotiable, and changing your mindset around what you want for yourself.

Setting and achieving small personal goals has a ripple effect that impacts your relationships, confidence, and energy so you expand your view of what's possible and what comes next as you manage anxiety, reduce stress, and love your life.


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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Deito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm, and inspiration to take action. So you walk away feeling confident, calm and ready to live. Let's get to it.

Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome to episode 106 of the More Than Anxiety podcast. I'm so excited to have you here this week. If this is your first time, welcome. It is always great to have new listeners and new watchers. I hope you'll stick around and check out some old episodes and if you've been with me for a while, welcome back. As always, I am thrilled that you're here, that you keep continuing to choose to spend your time with me. Honestly, it means so much to me.

Megan Devito:

So this week, I want to talk with you about being ambitious enough, about what that word means to me and what it might mean for you, but also what it means to a client that I just had a conversation with last week. I want to share this conversation, totally keeping them anonymous. But for you to get the gist of the story, I think it's just a really important thought that so many people have. So I'm working with a client last week and they're telling me about what's coming up next for them. We are about three months into our coaching sessions and they had knocked out their goals already. So when that happens, what I do is I kind of go back. We look at where they started, where they are now and where they want to go next, basically continuing to work on those previous goals and to solidify those habits, but to also expand them into, okay, no what are you going to do with these new things that you can do? Now that you're less anxious, now that you're not always spinning in confusion, you're not overthinking, you're not feeling as overwhelmed all those different things that I help my clients achieve? So I asked them what they wanted to do. It was the end of our session and I said let's just pick up next week, take time over the week to think about it, let me know what you've decided.

Megan Devito:

So the following week we get on a call and I asked them. I said all right, tell me what's coming up. What do you want to do? And it was funny. The one of the things that they said was that I don't know how I feel about my goals. I don't feel like I'm ambitious enough. They seem so small and kind of silly. And I said what, wait, wait, wait, hold on, tell me what your goals are.

Megan Devito:

Again, they told me their goals were to be more present with their kids, to make sure that they had great memories and great experiences with their children while they were growing up, to make sure that they were an incredible partner and spouse, and to put their phone away and to not even think about it when they leave the house and just to be able to continue that really being present and in on their life, so that they could have great memories and be a great parent and a great spouse. And my thought was why are these goals not ambitious? Why are they too small? Because in that conversation, one of the things that we really talked about was that their goals are their goals. Your goal is your goal. So when we take our goals and we think they aren't ambitious enough, they aren't big enough, it's because we're comparing them to what somebody else is doing for their goals and that's great for them. I want that for them and I want what this person wanted for them as well.

Megan Devito:

So this is really the gist of the episode that I want to cover and really what to bring to you, just to challenge, if you are in a place where you think I don't have goals, my goals aren't big enough, they're stupid. Just hold on, because what I've found in working with lots of clients as a life coach is that we all really want the same things. We just want them for different reasons and in different ways. So one person's goal might be to move from the West Coast to the East Coast and to totally overhaul their life, to have a brand new career and to have all the excitement and the joy and the freedom of moving all the way across the country, and that's amazing for sure. But that's their goal. Because another person's goal might be like the goals that my client has, where it's like I want to be content, I want to really fall in love with my family, I want to be so present that I know what's happening in their lives. I know how to respond, I know how to grow good humans. That's incredible. Heck, yes, but let's take time to really look at what ambitious means and what it means.

Megan Devito:

If you tell me that you don't even make goals for yourself, that that just feels too hard, because I get that too. So, really quick overview in this episode we're going to talk about how overcoming overwhelm and overthinking, managing stress and anxiety can help you think more clearly and creatively to be able to come up with goals for yourself. If you can't make goals, my guess is you're probably stressed out, anxious or already feeling overwhelmed by everything that's happening in your life. Let's talk about that. Let's also talk about redefining what ambition means, or maybe defining it for the first time for you, so that you know what it is and what it's not. My guess is it's probably not what you think it is. And then, third, I really want to talk about the importance of just making small goals or micro goals, so you have achievable things to celebrate on your way to something new, something that you might not have even thought of yet. So this is where we're going to go in this episode. It's not going to be a super long one. I want to keep it brief because I know you've got a lot on your plate, but let's go ahead and get started.

Megan Devito:

And let's start by talking about overwhelm and anxiety. This is a super common theme for me. I have a resource available that you can find in the show notes to help you figure out why you're so overwhelmed, and it goes way beyond you have too much on your calendar or too much in your brain? I get it. You can take that quiz and find out why you're overwhelmed. Bring that to a consultation call with me. But if you are in a place where you do have too much on your schedule or too much on your mind, and if you are feeling exceptionally stressed out or anxious, it can be really difficult to set and create goals because your life, your energy, your time and your brain are already fully occupied. This is a really common feeling and a really common theme. That happens when I first get on a call with new clients. They'll tell me our first session is always okay, let's set some goals. And sometimes they're like how many do I have to make? Because coming up with one can be a really big struggle sometimes. So that struggle that they have is often accompanied by a lot of really negative self-talk, like I just give up every time. I never follow through.

Megan Devito:

I'm a quitter. I've heard that one before. I'm a quitter, I quit everything. Well, yet, or so far, yes, maybe so far you've quit everything, but that doesn't mean you're always going to do that, because you can choose not to, and I really help support people not to quit. That's kind of the point of having a coach, isn't it? To have somebody that backs you up with a little accountability and a little support, kind of cheerleading along the way. Yes, so if you've always quit everything, I get it. I did too. That's how we find what we want, isn't it?

Megan Devito:

Or I'm totally going to screw this up. I screw everything up. I hear that a lot. I just can't ever get it perfect enough. Everything is always not quite right. That's a big one. I do not have any time. Everybody wants something from me and I have no help.

Megan Devito:

Yes, all of this I'm not saying it's not true. I'm just saying that we have to find new ways to deal with it. So if you're in a place where you're trash-talking yourself, if you are referring to yourself as a hot mess, an idiot, always anxious, a terrible mom, a terrible employee, an awful coworker, a hindrance, a burden, any of those things If those are in your thoughts are coming out of your mouths, it's going to make it really difficult to achieve a goal, because that person who thinks they are that thing doesn't have a way to move forward. Goals feel impossible. Let's deal with that. If you deal with that, it's easier to come up with what you want to see in your life next. So when you are living your life in a place of low-level fight or flight and what I mean by that is constant stress, a constant feeling of anxious energy inside your body it is literally impossible for the part of your brain that thinks creatively and rationally to function. So if that's you, if it's in your body, it's shutting down your brain a little bit, and vice versa. We want to find a way to lower the stress and lower the anxiety so that we can come up with those goals. Sometimes that has to happen before we ever get to what you actually want. And I don't think what you actually want is the giant pie in the sky goal all the time. It's usually the same for everybody we want joy, we want love, we want comfort. We want compassion, we want friendship, we want connection, we want adventures, we want safety, we want abundance, we want to feel secure, and those things just look differently for everyone. So when we start, we bring your stress and anxiety levels, and we do that through mindfulness practices like paying attention to your body, paying attention to what's actually true in your life, bringing you into a place that's more centered so that you're not floating out in one catastrophe after the next catastrophe. Another thing we do is really take time to intentionally add self-care into your calendar. I trip over the word self-care sometimes because I'm like, oh, it just sounds so corny and cliche. But honestly, self-care is just really taking care of yourself. That doesn't mean always taking a bubble bath. It doesn't mean always treating yourself to doing whatever. Sometimes it's like I'm going to take a minute to breathe. Sometimes it is setting goals. Sometimes it's learning not to trash talk yourself. All of those things are self-care, and we're going to make sure that you have a place in your life to take care of yourself. If you don't take care of yourself, it's going to be really hard to become the person that you were created to be, and our goal is to be more of who we really are, who we were created to be, so that we can do really cool things Sometimes, you know, like win Grammys and other times raise amazing kids. Both of those goals are equally valuable.

Megan Devito:

The next thing I want to talk about is redefining ambition. If we think about ambition, I wonder what you picture inside of your head. My first thought was an old Madonna album called Blonde Ambition, and so I immediately think Madonna yeah, put her on the same level as like Taylor Swift or the Beatles or somebody else. That's like super iconic. If that is your thought about ambition, that can feel very overwhelming and impossible. Like ambition, like I have to want to go out and change the world in a minute.

Megan Devito:

That's not necessarily ambition. That's an iconic figure who has a ton of ambition. For sure. It doesn't matter whether you are talking about Madonna or Travis Kelsey or Jeff Bezos. Whoever you're talking about, those people for sure have ambition, but that doesn't mean that you don't. It just means their ambitions were different than yours. That's perfectly fine, but you still have ambition. It's important to know that.

Megan Devito:

So I've struggled over and over how to define the people that I help, and I keep going back to the word ambition because I think it's accurate. I think it is people who are ambitious. But if you are like the client that I'm working with right now, and ambition was a word that you tripped over. I'll admit that it's a word that I've tripped over in the past too, but that's not what. Ambition isn't that big, grandiose, iconic idea. It's really the idea that you have something that you are willing to work for, to achieve that is in line with your values. That's it. It is something that you will work for to achieve that is in line with your values. If you've got those three things, I'm willing to work hard to spend more intentional time with my kids so that I can feel joy and I can feel purpose in my life. Yeah, that's ambition.

Megan Devito:

It does come with hard work, though, and I think that's really important. I think sometimes people come to coaches like let's make this real easy, just tell me what to do. And, my friend, that is not coaching. I would love to make it easy, and I'll help you make it as easy as I can. My job is to make it simple so that you can have the steps and so that you can achieve what you want to achieve, but I can't tell you it won't be hard work. Most things in life worth having or experiencing definitely take work. If it comes easy, it's nice, it could be fun, but it's probably not the stuff that you're working for. Let's make it as simple as possible, and that does require change. It requires flexibility, it requires a dedication to do the work. You have to decide. If you've got that, you're ambitious, congratulations. It does not have to be, I'm going to go on a three-year-long concert tour for three hours a night. I'm just going to go back to Taylor Swift on everything today, apparently I'll move on.

Megan Devito:

So if it's difficult for you to achieve a goal based on that word ambition that I keep talking about, because you're like I don't know, I'm not ambitious, I'm going to challenge that right now. I think you are ambitious. I think you're judging yourself for what your goals are. Maybe you think your goals aren't big enough. Maybe you think I don't even have a goal because everything is too much. I'm overwhelmed, oh my God. It's like always somebody is yelling, "mom, somebody is asking me to stay over for meetings. I don't have any time. I can't even go to bed at a decent time. I'm taking work home with me. If that's you, that's why you're struggling to create a goal. So let's find a way to kind of bypass that, so that you can still come up with things that you want for yourself without being overwhelmed by trying to come up with a goal. Let's just start with a goal that's right for you, because your goals are your goals, and setting goals that align with your personal values, that bring you fulfillment, is what we're after.

Megan Devito:

So for one person I told you that might be having the courage and audacity to pick up and move across the country. Great. But for you it can look entirely different. It might be I want to spend more time outside. I want to leave work on my desk and be out of there at 5.01. Perfect, let's go there. But part of that goal is always going to have to be to learn to take care of yourself more. I'm going to put that in there, even if you don't put it in there, because to achieve goals, you have to have some energy and you have to have brain space. So when you're taking care of yourself and you are filling your cup so that you're more present so that you're able to think clearly and creatively so that you can regulate your emotions without lashing out at your partner because they look at you funny and I say that with love, because I do it too sometimes.

Megan Devito:

When you can do that, when you can start to listen to your partner instead of screaming at them, when you can put your phone down and get dopamine from going outside and playing tag with your kids, when you know that you did a great job in your like, in your presentation at work, and you didn't need anyone to tell you, that's taking care of yourself. That's admitting that you, I did a good job. I actually am admitting that I'm a really valuable employee. That's the stuff that I love. That's the stuff that fires me up.

Megan Devito:

When I'm working with clients and, yes, when they do things like I'm going in for this raise and this promotion, I'm creating my own job, and I want you just to help me figure out what exactly I want. Yes, let's do that too, but it's about you, it's not about me. I want you to have the best life that you can imagine for yourself, whatever that is. So how do I help people do this? This is a really important question. I already told you that it's not me telling you what to do. That would be hiring a consultant, and there is value to that. If you are looking for a consultant, there are lots of them out there. My dad's actually a consultant. That's kind of a cool job. People come to you. You're like a human advice column. Yeah, that's great. But if you want to be able to figure it out and trust yourself, that's what coaching is.

Megan Devito:

So let's start by daydreaming. Let's go back to maybe you used to lay in your bed and make up stories in your head. Let's daydream again. Let's just talk about what you don't have right now that you want. I do this on a consultation call. This is really really early on.

Megan Devito:

Let's talk about what you want that you don't have, and then I'm just going to ask you why do you think you don't have it? What do you think is keeping you from that? A lot of times I hear I'm too overwhelmed, I'm too freaked out, I have nowhere to start. I'm broke, I'm confused, I'm not sure that's actually what I want. That's important. We have to know what you think is happening, but we also have to know why you want it. You've probably heard a million times what's your why? It's an important question. You need to know why, and my guess is that when you really get clear on why I want a lot of money, so I can go on a lot of vacations. Okay, why? Why do you want to go on a lot of vacations? Why is that important to you? Let's just dig and dig and dig until we get to what's actually important to you. And when we get to what's actually important to you, that's when we found your values and that's what we're going to use to get you what you want, because vacations are amazing and I want to go more on more of them too. And I'm not saying you shouldn't actually go on all the vacations you want. I want to go with you. But when you realize what's important about those vacations, it's what you get from them. Yes, you get to see beautiful places, but why is that important?

Megan Devito:

Who else benefits from you having what you want? Because you benefit, for sure. But there are other people in your life who also benefit. Your coworkers definitely benefit from working with a positive, happy and goal-oriented coworker. Your family benefits from having somebody who is happy to see them, who's not exhausted, who wants to be playful, who wants to be a part of their lives. Your dog benefits. You have more energy to take your dog for a walk. You're happier to see them, you can take outside and throw a ball with them. Everyone benefits when you feel good. So let's figure out why things are important to you.

Megan Devito:

After we figure out what's important to you, let's break it down and let's make whatever it is that you want seem manageable. It probably feels really out of reach right now, and that's normal, because if it wasn't out of reach, you probably wouldn't be listening to this podcast right now. You'd just be doing it. Let's make it easy. Let's break it down into a simple step. Part of what we do when I'm working with someone is take those big, scary, unmovable things and crush them up. We take them and we take one giant boulder and we make it into a lot of little rocks so that we can easily move them out of the way. Boulders are heavy. They're hard to move Tiny stones. You just pick them up and chuck them to the side.

Megan Devito:

We want to make it manageable and we do that by learning to regulate your emotions so that you can think clearly. Learning to regulate your emotions starts with paying attention to how your body feels, and when you notice that you feel stressed, you feel anxious or any other kind of emotion, we learn how to handle the thoughts that come along with that. So for my clients who are really stressed out and anxious, one of the first rules that we set is, if you feel that feeling in your body, you are not allowed to believe anything that you think at that point, because if you were, it would be an anxious thought or a stress thought, and those are not true. We want to make sure that we're paying attention. What do you actually feel? You said bad. Tell me what bad means. I need to break it down even further. Let's get it as granular and simple as we can. We're going to make it as simple as possible.

Megan Devito:

The one part of ambition that holds true for every single goal is that it's going to take work. So as you start moving those little rocks away and as you start saying, hey, I did that, I did that, we are going to celebrate a lot. Celebrating gives you little hits of dopamine and it shows you that you are making progress, so that you don't feel like you're still waiting for this big, giant goal. So if you think about New Year's and everybody sets you know, somebody creates a resolution for themselves and my goal is to lose 10 pounds. Two weeks later they've lost one pound and they're like, well, screw that, I wanted to lose 10 and they give up. But if they would have celebrated the one pound 10 times, they would have celebrated 10 times and achieved their goal. So we celebrate a lot. We really acknowledge all of the progress that you're making along the way so that you gain momentum.

Megan Devito:

It gets easier to say no to the cake when you're like, yeah, but I'm already doing it. If we can start paying attention to what's working, how successful you're already being, how things are lining up for you, the opportunities that have always been there, that you're finally able to see, that's what creates momentum and that's when things get really exciting and the changes start happening even more and more quickly. So when we start achieving those small goals, your confidence grows, your motivation grows and your success comes faster. And I'm pretty sure that having fast success is something that everybody wants. I don't like to wait. I don't have a lot of patience, and maybe you don't either. I get it, I get it.

Megan Devito:

So what would happen if you started to believe that you could survive without actually looking at your phone and feeling left out? A lot of people just look at their phones because they want to make sure they're included and then they get sad because they're not. But what happened if you could put your phone away and not even think about it? If that's your goal, it's totally possible. Maybe that's not your goal, that's fine too.

Megan Devito:

But what would happen if you started seeing evidence that saying no to something opened the door for other things, and that you didn't get like ostracized from your group of friends? You didn't miss out on anything. You said no because you were tired and because you said no other opportunities opened up for you. You can say no. We can learn how to create boundaries together. What would change if you started noticing that leaving your work at work gave you more time at home, yes but also made you a better employee when you were actually in the office, because you weren't so burnt out?

Megan Devito:

What if creating that space between your home life and your work life actually made you a better employee? You can find out. There are so many things that we can do together, but I just want you to know that those goals that might not feel big enough or ambitious enough are perfect. They are exactly right. They wouldn't be in your head if they weren't what you needed. You think those things, you want those things for a reason, so let's figure out why. Let's just talk about why. Those small steps are going to get you everywhere, and the first one you need to take is to message me. You can find me on Instagram and Facebook at @CoachMeganDevito - all one word.

Megan Devito:

You can also go to the show notes for this podcast, whether you're watching it on YouTube or you are listening on some other platform. It's there. Click it, go to my calendar and schedule time to talk with me. Tell me what you're trying to do, tell me why you think you don't have what you want right now, and let's come up with ways to get you there. It's super simple and if I don't talk to you on a call this week, I will be back again next week. Thank you for watching While you're here subscribe, leave a review, leave me some stars.

Megan Devito:

I appreciate it so much and it makes it so much easier for everyone else to find this information and to get the help they need to. All right, take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.