The Huge Hidden Obstacle to Reaching Your Biggest Vision and Goals, and How to Get Past It

You're listening to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. In today's episode, we share the huge hidden obstacle to reaching your biggest vision and goals, and how to get past it. So, stay tuned. If you want to have real and powerful influence over the money and policy decisions that impact your organization and the people you serve, then you're in the right place. I'm Kath Patrick, and I've helped dozens of progressive nonprofit leaders take their organizations to new and higher levels of impact and success by building powerful influence with the decision makers that matter. It is possible to get a critical mass of the money and policy decision makers in your world to be as invested in your success as you are, to have them seeking you out as an equal partner, and to have them bringing opportunities and resources to you. This podcast will help you do just that. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. Hey there, folks. Welcome to the Nonprofit Power Podcast. I'm your host, Kath Patrick. I'm so glad you're here for today's episode because if you're like so many nonprofit leaders that I work with, you have a big vision or maybe a big new ambitious goal. And you know it has the potential to make a huge impact. You're inspired and excited about it. And you find that you keep putting off taking the actions that will start moving you toward that big thing. You have lots of good reasons for that. Now's not a good time. Maybe when things calm down a little, we can focus on that, but right now we have too many urgent things to deal with. Or maybe it's, "I'm not ready yet. First I need to learn more or plan more, research more," et cetera. If that's what's going on, you are not alone. This is a super common problem, and I wanna let you in on what's actually going on when that's happening. Those all sound like real rational things that are true, right? Things are crazy right now. It's impossible. We have too much going on. We can't possibly be doing the stretch thing right now. I'll do that later. I'll do that soon. I'll da, da, Here's the thing. What's really going on is that is your subconscious tricking you into staying right where you are. Your subconscious will always tell you that now is not the right time, that you're not ready yet, and so on, and so on. That's why we so often put off going after that big, scary goal, the big bodacious vision or dream. Because that feels really scary to the subconscious. It does not like change. It regards anything new as a threat, and it will do whatever it takes to stop you from walking into that threat. Now, there's two pieces to that threat. One is kind of the general unknown of all the bad things that could happen if you move off the status quo. And the other is the changes that will be required of you, and that's even scarier to the subconscious because it goes to your very identity. We have to deal with both if we wanna get to those big, amazing, ambitious, powerful visions that are calling us forward and that we want so much. But that we always feel like, well, you know, we'll do that when things calm down. We'll do that when fill in the blank. I want you to be able to go after those big things right now. But that means we have to deal with both of these types of resistance that the subconscious is busy creating for us. Big, bold, ambitious stuff means big change to the status quo. And that's a big threat. As far as the subconscious is concerned, that's an enormous threat. It's a crocodile brain. Its job is your survival. What it wants is to stay in the safe and familiar because so far that has not gotten you killed. You're okay where you are. Things are safe. They may not be perfect, they may not even be great. They might suck, but you're alive. And as far as the subconscious is concerned, that's the priority. Its one and only job is to keep you safe and alive. That is an evolutionary thing that is still very valuable. Obviously, we do wanna make sure we don't do things that'll get us killed. That's a good plan. Thank you, subconscious. Thank you for your service. That is awesome. The problem is that that mechanism evolved at a time when threats were real and physical all the time. There was a tiger outside the cave, and we had to worry about not getting eaten by it when we went out to gather nuts and berries so that we could eat. That was once a real problem. It is not a problem in our day-to-day lives anymore, and we know that on the conscious level. On the thinking brain level, we know that. Of course, we know that. But the subconscious is like, "Oh, no. No, no, no. We need to keep doing the same things the same way as always because that didn't get us killed, and therefore that is safe, and therefore that is approved activity." Anything new you wanna try to go do, it doesn't matter if it's bungee jumping off the Grand Canyon or pursuing a really big, ambitious goal in your organization. It regards both of those as equally dangerous. Now, I would make the argument that your subconscious would be right on target if it told you not to bungee jump off the Grand Canyon. But it doesn't distinguish. That's not its job. It hasn't evolved to do that. So what we have to do is trick the subconscious into working with us. First of all, to calm down, and then to work with us. And we can absolutely do that. We can hack our subconscious to do amazing things for us. But the first thing we gotta do when we threaten it with some big, bold, amazing, super ambitious idea, vision, goal. We have to help the subconscious calm down about it. And one of the easiest ways to do that is for us to acknowledge that the path between where we are now, and the realization of that big bodacious thing. That's gonna involve a thousand little actions and nearly as many course corrections along the way. You take a step, you take action, you get a result, and then you discover what the next step needs to be. That's not that threatening. That's kinda not terrible. Okay, We could do this one little thing over here. Let's just try this thing. What freaks the subconscious out is the big hairy thing, because it represents massive change, right? But we also know it doesn't work that way. I mean, it'd be super cool if we could sit here and ideate and say, "Woo-hoo, I have envisioned a bold, fabulous thing. I will take action, and I will leap from here to the result. Poof, we're done." Of course, we know from lived experience it doesn't work that way. But the subconscious is like, mm, as if it did. As if the path from here to that amazing, bodacious vision and goal was the same as if we said, I wanna get to the bottom of the Grand Canyon. I'll just bungee jump it." Well, there is no bungee jump to the end result for the goal, for the vision. Doesn't work that way. We know that. But the subconscious is like, "Nuh-uh. No, no. Too scary. Too big." But our thinking brain knows that it's not one giant leap. However cool that might be if we could actually do that, it isn't reality. Reality is lots of little actions that build on one another and grow and create momentum and start building toward that big, fabulous thing. But I will caution you because your subconscious is a sneaky little bugger, and what it will try to do is tell you, Yes, definitely. Incremental is the way to go. Let's plan some more." Let's plan a lot. Let's spend the next year or so planning and thinking about it. That is another trick of the subconscious. Thinking that you can plan it all out ahead of time in order to reduce the risk and reduce the scary. That's an illusion, and it's a tactic your subconscious will use to keep you from ever taking action. So every time you hear yourself say, "Oh, well, we need to learn more, we need to plan more, we need to whatever, whatever more before we start. That's just not true. That is your subconscious trying to trick you. All you really need is to say yes to the big thing. And then make the conscious decision to take one small action in the direction of that thing, and commit to taking some small action each day or each week until you start making progress. That is one of the most valuable ways you can calm down the subconscious and bypass its instinct to keep you in the same place. Because as you take small incremental action, your subconscious will discover that it's not quite as scary as it felt. You took the small action and nothing bad happened. You didn't die. You're still here. Okay, well I guess that was all right. And then as you do that incrementally, the resistance from the subconscious begins to reduce because it's beginning to learn, oh, okay, these little steps aren't killing us. It seems to be all right. That seems to be safe. That's a key piece. There's also some rewiring of beliefs that needs to happen. We will talk about that in a little bit. But the first thing we gotta do is calm the subconscious down, because until we do that, it will find every possible way to serve up these incredibly rational sounding arguments for why now is not the time. Not just yet. We'll do that later when XYZ, fill in the blank, has happened. And it'll never change. The most important hack in all of this, is to understand that's what's going on. That that's what your subconscious is up to. And it's not you personally, it's the human condition. We are all wired this way. We all have to deal with this. We all have to figure out our ways of initially outsmarting the subconscious and then ultimately retraining it so that it is aligning more effectively with the big ambitious things we wanna do. We don't just wanna sideline it, we wanna enroll it as our ally and get it working with us and for us. And that is entirely possible. But there's another calm down project here first. Because we also have to help the subconscious deal with the changes required of you in order to reach that big ambitious vision or goal. So again, it's first helpful to acknowledge that your identity will need to evolve in order to reach that really big thing. Maybe a little or maybe a lot, depending on the identities you're operating from right now. But think about this in super simple terms. We'll just cast this as a revenue goal. What's required of a CEO of a $10 million organization is very different than what's required of a CEO of a $1 million organization. Different level of showing up, different level of commanding a room, different level of interacting with big powerful decision-makers, and so on. If you wanna move on to that bigger playing field, you have to be willing to evolve into the leader who can thrive and succeed on that field. So I offer that one very stark difference by way of example, but it applies to any time when you have something really big you wanna shoot for that's a big stretch. That means you will need to evolve. What got you here won't get you there. We're gonna need to be operating from elevated identities and taking higher level action. That's the only way that happens. So the other thing the subconscious will try to tell you is, "Oh, no, no, you don't need to change anything. Just keep doing more of what you're doing now, and then you'll get to the thing." Uh-uh. No. That's never how it works. It always requires something new, something bigger, something higher level. So we have to acknowledge that first. Our conscious thinking brain has to say, "Yeah, mm-hmm, that is gonna be required." And that can feel pretty scary on the conscious level, never mind your subconscious flipping out in the background. So we start by acknowledging. And then we begin to think about, to imagine how that bigger version of you will be operating once you've reached that big goal or vision. What will that 'you' look like? What will you be doing that's different? What higher level identities will you be operating from? What higher level actions will you be taking? How does the leader who has achieved that huge goal or vision and is now operating from that place, how are they operating? Think about it, imagine it clearly, and write it all down. And then here's the trick. You start operating from that set of identities and those higher level actions right now, here today. Because the truth is you won't get there until you evolve your identity. The evolution isn't something that happens because you reached the goal. You reached the goal because you evolved your identities and elevated your actions to fit the bigger thing, and operated from that consistently. Now, you don't have to do it all at once. In fact, that's often way too big a stretch in one move. But you begin the process. And be intentional about it. You've written it all down. You've got your, your list, your whatever, your picture. I'm a very visual thinker, so I like to think in pictures, but whatever works for you. Maybe it's a list, maybe it's a drawing, maybe it's a 3D rendering, maybe it's a sculpture. I don't know. Whatever works for you. But pick a piece and try it on. Make some small decisions to start, but make them from that new higher level identity and see what changes. See how things turn out differently and better. Once again, when you do that, the subconscious will discover that not only did nothing bad happen, but typically something pretty great happens. Rinse and repeat until you are operating 100% from that complete new set of identities. All of that is essential first layer work. We gotta have awareness of what's going on. We gotta calm down the subconscious and teach it that this isn't gonna kill us, it's fine. And we're gonna do it in little pieces so it doesn't freak out so much. It's like, "See, look, I just put my toe in the water. I didn't jump in the whole ocean. I just put a toe in. See? It's all fine." Right? And then you put your whole foot in. Pretty soon you're up to your knees, and pretty soon you're swimming. And the subconscious is not flipping out. It's like, "Oh, look, we're swimming. I guess we're not drowning. Guess it's okay. Cool. Great. Now what else should we be afraid of? Oh, I know, sharks. Uh, riptides. I'll think of something." Never mind, you got this. As long as you know what it's up to, you can manage your subconscious and help it cope. Now let's talk about how we harness that subconscious and get it really working for us. And we talk about this a lot on the podcast, in my coaching groups, everywhere, because this is so, so essential. We gotta teach the subconscious to adopt a new set of beliefs and a new set of identities. And one of the best ways to do that is to, when you've identified those pieces of identity that you know you will need to be operating from when you hit that big goal. And you're gonna start doing it now. Write down some pieces of what that identity looks like and turn it into some phrases that begin with I am. To loop back to my super simple example that is a revenue difference. I am the CEO of a $10 million organization. I stand comfortably in rooms filled with powerful decision-makers because I'm there to help them see the value of investing in our work at the highest possible level. The value of partnering with our amazing organization that is visionary and creating incredible outcomes and benefits in the world. I help them see how being on board with that is the smartest thing they can ever do. Things like that. Create your own narrative. It can be a sentence, it can be a few sentences in a short paragraph. And repeat that to yourself out loud regularly, daily, multiple times a day. When you do that, what you are doing is training your subconscious to operate from that identity. This is how we get the conscious brain to lead the subconscious and teach it to serve us and align with what we want instead of fighting against what we want. The image that always comes to my mind is if you've ever tried to put a cat in a cat carrier face first. All four paws are braced against the opening and they're like, "No! You will not make me go in there." That's your subconscious when you're asking it to go in the place that represents that big, new, bold vision or goal. It's the cat trying not to go in the carrier. And what we want ultimately is for the subconscious to be the cat that goes, "Yeah, cool. There's treats in there. I'm going right in. Let's do it. So that's the very basics of how we begin to train the subconscious to work with us toward these big ambitious goals. Now, I would be remiss if I didn't mention one other set of subconscious barriers that are out there that I'm sure you're aware of, that more than once has torpedoed an amazing vision or goal. And that is all the other people around you whose subconscious will be fighting against the thing that you want. And that could be higher-ups in your organization, it could be people on your board. It could be people in your personal life. Each of them for their own reasons may feel threatened by your big vision, by your big ambitious goal. And their subconscious will kick into overdrive to try to stop you. We've all experienced this. One of the most common stories I hear is we've got this incredible thing. We're so excited and we got these three board members that are like, "Oh, no. No, no, no. That sounds risky. I don't know. That doesn't sound right. Why don't we just stick to the core mission? We're doing fine. We don't need to be doing all those other things." Or sometimes, particularly in larger organizations, you can have team members who feel that way, who feel very threatened and concerned about some big, new ambitious thing. So we need to deal with that too. And for sure, we could do an entire episode just on leading change within the organization. So I'm making a mental note right now. I will devote an episode just to that. But I want to at least touch on it because we would be remiss not to acknowledge this. There's some basic pieces that we should at least talk through a little bit here. First of all, generally speaking, for all the reasons I already talked about, people think that the status quo is safe. But the reality is that very often staying in the status quo is absolutely the most dangerous thing you can do. But we have to show people why and how that is true, and help them see that moving toward the big ambitious thing is actually far less risky than staying right where we are. We also have to understand that people worry that their individual... and this is typically with team members, people worry that their individual world will change. Perhaps more will be asked of them. Perhaps they will have to do something they don't yet know how to do, and they're worried about failing. Whenever people resist change, there's always fear at the root. A key piece of addressing that is you have to find out what the fear is really about. And if you can't do that, for whatever reason, then you can start with the list of the most common fears and just address them anyway on the theory that one or more of them will apply. It's also very important to give people a role in the change so that the change is not something that's happening to them, but rather something they're helping to make happen. And whenever possible, of course, you wanna help people see how the change is in their self-interest. We have to think broadly about that. It might not be that they're gonna get a bigger salary or a promotion or something. It might mean that. Might very well mean that, particularly if your big ambitious thing is revenue related. But it also might be that it is something that benefits their altruistic vision. It may make it possible to serve more people at a higher level, which is something that just about everybody working in a nonprofit space cares deeply about. Or more time. Somebody who's working directly with clients, if they're feeling like, "I have too big a caseload and I can't do them justice." Well, when we achieve this big vision, you will have more time. You will be able to do more one-on-one time, whatever it is. It very often is not about more money or more status. It's much more often about internal satisfaction with the altruistic goals and the personal vision people have for themselves about how they're making an impact in the world. So never forget the power of that. I've encountered all these different scenarios in leading different types of change in different organizations. And, you know, a lot of times it's the team is fine, but the board is freaked out. Sometimes the board is fine, and the team is freaked out. Sometimes everybody's freaked out. So you have to adjust your strategies accordingly because often board and team will be freaked out about different sets of stuff. We have to manage everybody whose subconscious is having an issue with this. But again, it's so helpful when you know that that's what's going on. It's almost never that they're just generically obstreperous and being difficult for the sake of being difficult. It is almost always grounded in fear, and very often that fear is not conscious. It is operating at the subconscious level. Sometimes it's also conscious and they can articulate it for you, in which case listen like crazy and then have them become part of how we make the big vision work for them too. I don't wanna go into the whole episode's worth of stuff around that 'cause it could be a really deep dive, and it's a worthy one. But for the purposes of this conversation, which is really about that biggest obstacle which is always, always the subconscious. And having some basic tools to know how to wrangle the subconscious, to calm it down, and to help bring it into alignment so that it is working for us instead of fighting against us. That's what I want for you. I'm hopeful that this has given you some basic ideas and tools to work with to help you get on a path, whatever your big vision, your big ambitious thing that you wanna go after, that with these tools that I've shared, that you'll be able to get moving toward that right away, and have an easier time of it along the way. Thanks for listening, and I'll see you in the next episode right here on the Nonprofit Power Podcast.