55. The Power of Setting an Impossible Goal
Most high-achieving women set goals they already know how to reach. We call it being realistic, but really, it's how we stay safe. The moment we declare something impossible, every fear, doubt, and old identity shows up - but that's also the moment transformation begins.
In this special anniversary episode celebrating one year of The Balanced Leader, I explore the concept of impossible goals through my own journey of building a globally ranked podcast now in the top 2% worldwide and preparing for my upcoming TED talk.
Through client examples and my personal experience of setting a goal to impact 1000 women annually, I share how positive pressure creates expansion rather than burnout. You'll discover why impossible goals matter not just for what you achieve, but for who you become in the process, and how to use intentional, imperfect action to build the internal safety and emotional capacity that transforms your leadership.
You're invited to Leadership Lab: How to Be Heard in a Room Full of Men! This is a 2-day live, interactive workshop where high-achieving women stop overperforming and start leading with the presence, power, and authority only they can bring. It’s happening November 7th and 10th, 2025. Click here to join.
What You’ll Learn from this Episode:
How impossible goals force identity shifts that make transformation inevitable.
Why women often contract into "realistic" goals based on past experience rather than future capability.
The difference between positive pressure that creates presence versus negative pressure that leads to burnout.
How to build emotional capacity by acting before you feel ready.
Why celebrating mistakes and risks rewires your nervous system for growth.
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The Last Word on Power by Tracy Goss
Full Episode Transcript:
Most high-achieving women set goals they already know how to reach. We call it being realistic, but really, it's how we stay safe. Because the moment we declare something impossible, every fear, doubt, and old identity shows up. But that's also the moment transformation begins. Today we are going to dive into the positive power of pressure from impossible goals. Let's go.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode. We are talking about the positive power of impossible goals. And I wanted to just share something that I'm really proud of, and I also wanted to thank you all. The Balanced Leader turns 1 this month. So about a year ago, I had also this sort of impossible goal to start this podcast to really impact more women. So that what I'm teaching to women to help women lead with more presence and power could be out there in the world on demand at any time for anyone around the world, right? So that they had a resource to listen to, to have some tools to start impacting the way that they're showing up, especially in male-dominated spaces.
And I'm so proud to say that we are 2% globally ranked as a podcast. I thank you for being part of the community, for sharing it with other folks, and being part of this movement with me. This milestone is really what I think about as an impossible goal as part of my thought process around having an impossible goal, which for me is really about impacting over 1000 women a year to really make substantial changes in their life.
And so today I want to talk about why impossible goals matter, and not just for what you achieve, but who you become. And I'm going to share deeply and vulnerably in this conversation about my own journey with impossible goals and how it's so different than how I really thought about goals for myself when I was more in the corporate world and when I was, you know, even in school. I want to share what it is to be in an impossible goal, to be worthy of an impossible goal, and what happens when you decide to have an impossible goal and why it is so motivating in the positive way for you.
So, let's start talking about what an impossible goal is. And I want to reference the work of Tracy Goss. She wrote a book called The Last Word on Power. I'm actually going to be doing a power series based on the book where I'm going to be teaching a lot about the main goals of the book and the main teachings of the book, so you don't have to go and read the whole thing. But watch out for that. That's going to be something that's going to come in the near future.
So, let me tell you what I think of as an impossible goal. An impossible goal isn't something you don't know how to do. It's something that requires you to become someone you've never been before. So let me read that again. An impossible goal isn't something you don't know how to do, it's something that requires you to become someone you never been before, right?
So, what happens in an impossible goal is it really has you thinking about what is possible versus what's impossible. Oftentimes, and this is one of the reasons why women don't take as many risk and women are actually not getting that many roles or not being as visible or advocating for themselves as much, because often times women are using who they were in the past to define what goals feel reasonable and realistic in the present moment. And what that has us doing is instead of expanding, it has us contracting for control.
So when you think about what is possible, it's typically driven by evidence, experience, and safety. Well, I did this before, so I can stretch a little and do more of this. It is the thinking that has us taking baby steps, and I'm all about baby steps, but this impossible goal helps us believe beyond that baby step, and it has us taking more risk, and it has us being more activated and aligned to what we're doing.
So this possible goal is more about realism. Like, what is possible. And this is why a lot of women don't apply for jobs that they feel like they can't do or they don't have 100% of the qualifications for, because they're living in what's possible from the past. And instead of thinking about what they're capable of and what they're qualified to do because they can learn, they can grow, they often times use their past experience and what they've done in the past as a way to have themselves contract. If they didn't do it in the past and they don't have experience with it, even though they know that they can learn and they're capable, they put more emphasis on their past experience. And then they talk themselves out of doing bigger roles, bigger jobs.
Versus when you think about impossibility, right? Impossible goals, things that haven't happened yet, it helps you open up your mind creatively and it is really driven by creation. What is it that you're aligned to? What are you engaged in? It's more about an identity shift, and it's future based thinking. It's allowing your future self to lead you in the current moment versus allowing your past self to lead you in the current moment. Because if you allowed your past self, like even for me, as an entrepreneur, if I allowed my past self to be programming me now or informing me now, I would just be thinking about the corporate world and what I was able to achieve in the construct of the corporate world.
Whereas I am an entrepreneur, right? And my future is to be an entrepreneur, and the games are totally different. The rules are totally different. The landscape is expansive. And if I allow myself to be led by my future version of myself, then there's just more space. There is more fear that comes up for me, of course, having an open canvas, but there is more space for me to create and to shift into a next level identity.
I want to share with you, you know, last year, at the end of last year, I read this book, again, The Last Word on Power, and it's about executive reinvention, and it's about how you look at yourself and where you've been and where you want to go. It's for people who have been highly successful where they are, but they want that next level goal that's going to uplevel them, that is really about their identity. It's about their legacy, it's about what's next for them. And often times if you've been really successful, you don't want to break that pattern, right? Or you don't want to break the rules of what created that success. But in order to reinvent yourself, part of this is to let go of whatever winning strategy you had.
So again, in the corporate world, I played it safe. I was often times not taking as many risks. I took risk from a corporate standpoint, but from an entrepreneurial standpoint, the game is very different. I am investing my own capital. I am deciding, making a lot of choices, not from, you know, evidence from the past, but really from like what I believe is possible and what I believe is needed from the women that I coach.
So my example, as I really thought about this impossible goal for myself at the end of last year, I really thought what I would love to do and be able to do and really is a goal that's worthy of my time and energy and that I'm activated and connected to it was to serve 1000 women a year, to make an impact to 1000 women a year through my coaching, through my speaking. That was my mission. And I thought, well, if this is my mission, it totally informs the way that I show up in the world and my thought leadership and how big and bold I am in the world.
So my personal example of this, obviously I was a little scared. I'm like, okay, what is this going to look like? But the things that I decided to do this year and what I want to share with you that I'm very excited about was to really expand my thought leadership. So I became a contributor for Forbes. I was invited to write for them and I said yes to that. And I had also decided earlier this year that I wanted to do a TED Talk. After seeing some of my friends and colleagues do it, I said, you know, this is a way for me to serve over 1000 women and to have my message go out there about reclaiming anger.
Now, if you've listened to some of my podcast episodes before, you know that I feel strongly about emotions, especially anger, and women who are grounded and connected to their anger are the ones that are thriving in this male dominated spaces. And so I started that and I'll tell you, it was a process. I wrote the talk, I applied, I got rejected, I applied, I, you know, I changed up my talk a little bit. I kept like massaging it. And I needed to bounce back and a lot of what helped me bounce back was this idea, this goal of impacting 1000 women. I was like, I can't just stop here. I can't just give up. I have this amazing talk that I want to share with the world.
And what happened was, you know, when you have this, this desire and you're reaching out to people, a woman who's coordinating and launching this TEDx Union Women Talk in New Jersey actually reached out to me after, you know, I had reached out to her and other people letting them know I have this bold talk to share. And she wanted to know more about the talk. And I am so excited to share that I'm going to be doing a TED Talk at November 5th. So very shortly after recording this, a week from now, I'm going to be on a stage doing a talk about reclaiming anger.
And again, it is because I have this impossible goal, this mission, it helps to activate me. And even though, you know, people are like, aren't you scared to be on the stage? Aren't you scared about, you know, all these things in your life? You've got such a big life. I have two little kids, I have a husband with a demanding job. And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of things, but I'm grounded. I'm deeply grounded in the mission that I want to be delivering. I'm deeply grounded in making it work. I'm deeply committed to it.
And when you're committed to something deeply, right? You figure it out. You do what you need to shift things. You let go of mom guilt if that's in your way. You let go of, you know, judging yourself. You let go of a lot of things to move that mission forward. And so that's where I'm at. You know, this is where I'm at with my talk. And so I share this with you because I want you to be thinking about this and the power of this, right? Because there's real emotional science behind this.
The way that I talk about positive pressure is totally the opposite of negative pressure, but let me define what it is versus what it isn't, right? So first, what is it? Positive pressure isn't hustle. It's the energy that comes when you're deeply connected to your legacy and willing to act before you feel ready. Do I feel ready to do X, Y, and Z? Not always, right? But I'm willing to act. I'm willing to do the thing, and I'm willing to allow those emotions to come up because this is part of that transformation process. When you go and do something new, you're going to have feelings. You're going to have lots more feelings, and you get to decide how to act even with those feelings and with those feelings as part of the process, right?
So let me tell you the difference between positive pressure and pressure that isn't aligned with you, pressure that's coming from external and you trying to run after that external validation. Endless action with no connection to yourself gets you to burnout. I talk to a lot of women and they come to me, they feel so disconnected from themselves. They feel like they're full of task and logistics, and they feel like they are losing control and they feel like, why did I do certain things? Because when we don't have a goal that we're working towards, other people's agenda becomes our agenda.
We just create space to get stuff done, and we say this is what needs to happen. This is why a lot of corporate people find themselves in burnout because a corporate environment is relentless. It will ask of you, it will ask of you, it will ask of you. That's its job, right? And a job of a leader often times is to push anxiety downwards so that work gets done. When I'm saying anxiety, I'm actually mean like deliverables and like problems, right? It needs to get done.
And you can do it in a way that is intentional, aligned with yourself, connected to yourself. And this is where people are like, I love to work hard and play hard, but that play is really that connection to yourself, right? This is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is when you're so disconnected from yourself, you're just doing, doing, doing and you become this doing person and you are not balanced. You're not connected to that deeper yearning inside. You're not connected to why does this matter for you personally.
And so the contrast is intentional, imperfect action with deep connection. And this is what transformation is. Your ability to keep going, moving forward, but really with that mission and that purpose in mind, that deep connection with yourself. And the reason why positive pressure sharpens focus and resiliency is when you're deeply connected to that thing, you bounce back faster. You stop overthinking and you start reiterating, you start trying out new things. You don't make the thing that you wanted and you didn't get something bad about yourself. You're less likely to internalize it because you've got this mission, this moving forward, and you're just more seeing this as a almost like a playground for you to learn and bounce back and still stay committed and connected to yourself and your vision. You move through discomfort with purpose instead of panic.
This is how grounded leaders operate, not from urgency, but from alignment. They use pressure as presence. They allow that pressure to hit them in a way that brings them, wakes them up, has them connected to themselves, not like beating themselves up. And so this identity shift happens. These impossible goals force you to build that internal safety and that emotional capacity.
Listen, this is me too. I literally told my coach a couple of weeks ago, whoa, I feel like all this terror inside of me. I'm doing this TED talk, I'm doing a launch, I'm doing all these new things, I'm testing out all these new things, I'm learning all these new things. I feel terror in my body. And what it has me doing is facing the terror and have me having a relationship with it, right? It's not about achieving faster, it's about expanding who you are becoming in the process. And it expands your skill set. If you've got such a big goal for yourself, you are going to have emotions.
So, when I first set my impossible goal of serving 1000 women a year, I had to become a woman who could see, right, be seen, lead boldly, and make offers to help people unapologetically. And I'm still doing it every single day. I'm building this muscle. This is how I do it through the podcast, through all of the ways that I connect with you. Every time I take imperfect action towards that vision, I strengthen the muscle of belief. And that terror inside of me, I have a relationship with it and I say, I know it feels scary, but we're going to move ahead and we're connected and we believe in what we're doing. And when we believe in what we're doing, we're really grounded in ourselves.
And that groundedness helps to create that internal safety. And every time I do it, that fear feels less and less because it's like my body's kind of like, it's unsafe, something's going to happen. But the more I do it, the more I see, actually, I'm still here, I'm still breathing. I had lots of emotions, maybe I had a headache here or there, but I'm okay. I am able to build that emotional capacity and that internal safety for myself because I'm grounded in this impossible goal for me.
So grounded ambition isn't about speed. It's about alignment, acting from your future self, not your fear. And I want to share a client example because I've been working with this client for about six months now. And what she realized was she wasn't actually that activated or engaged in her work. She was like headed for burnout. She was like, I need to find a new job. And really what she was doing was running away from the pressure because she didn't have a strong goal for herself. She wasn't connected to the work she was doing and she didn't have this impossible goal that she cared deeply about.
And here's the thing, when you have an impossible goal that you care deeply about, it actually doesn't matter if you achieve the goal or not. I know it sounds super weird because we're in this like very masculine society that we're like, achieve that goal, get that thing, you know, do that, get that gold medal. But the reality is the gift of an impossible goal is who you become in the process. And who you become in the process, no one can take that away from you. It's not like to be measured or judged for anything. It is for you to have that impossible goal that you're moving towards that you feel like you're somebody worthy of holding that impossible goal and so deeply connected to it that you keep moving forward, no matter what.
So, how to get started? And I want you to think about this again. This is a way to activate yourself. This is a way to get you playing in a game that's for you. So the first thing is to declare the impossible goal, right? Name the thing you deeply desire but secretly doubt. And listen, you can change this. You can play with this, and it can be external to you, but it can also be internal to you. So let me give you some examples.
You want to name the thing you deeply desire but secretly doubt. Don't choose something that feels logical. If you're doing that, then you are again using your past self to inform your current and future self. We want you to choose something that feels electric. We want you to choose something that, you know, has you deeply connected but also scared. Like if you're not scared of this goal, then it's not big enough. That's probably what you've heard before.
So ask yourself, who would I have to become to make this inevitable, right? Because that is the process here. That is the play here. Impossible goals aren't just about your career leaps. They're also about cultural shifts, things that you deeply care about. But sometimes, you know, I know a lot of women, they care about these cultural shifts, but they don't really know how to do it in real time, right? How to be connected to it. So this is again, why the impossible goal is important, right? It's about becoming the woman who changes how leadership feels for everyone who comes after her. Maybe your impossible goal is becoming an industry leader who redefines what power looks like, especially in your male dominated space. Right? I have a lot of clients they're in manufacturing, in construction, and a lot of these spaces need their leadership.
And I'm not just going to say it's like the feminine leadership. It's the feminine plus the masculine leadership, the synergy of both, and they need it, right? I just talked to somebody this week who was like, I know I'm making an impact, and people know it too, but I feel like it's like not that important, but people say it's important, right? She actually planned a meeting, and the meeting was in a really beautiful space and she created vision around it and she created a vibe of collaboration and it got the job done even quicker. And people felt like they were part of something, right? Not just a bunch of vendors coming together to do something, right?
They felt like they were being onboarded in a way that, you know, had them feeling open and wanting to be there, and it was in a beautiful space. And these are all things that I think often times people discount in our society, especially in our very masculine society. Like this feminine energy, this vision holding, this really curating spaces for collaboration. This is powerful stuff. But if you don't see it as powerful, you will also discount it, right? And you may not actually see how powerful your power is when you discount it because you are judging it in some way.
So part of this is shifting the culture in your organization, but also shifting your views and values within yourself, so that you're starting to amplify and see the things that you are capable of doing. So one of these things, it could even be that your impossible goal is to shift cultures, but you're going to allow yourself to do it in so many different ways. And it might be amplifying other women's voices, but it starts with your own voice. Like how can I step into that more and more and model that for other people?
It could also be something internal. Finally trusting yourself enough to lead without apology, trusting your gut, knowing, hey, I'm going to lead in more and more of this way. Whatever it is, your impossible goal isn't supposed to like make sense to other people. It's really about making sense to yourself and it's supposed to make you new, make your identity about yourself and how you show up in the world different. And this creates positive pressure because you are anchored into it.
And once you have your goal, it's really important to create that positive pressure by sharing it with people. Set one public commitment or accountability anchor that helps you connect. Letting people know I have a vision of being a thought leader in this industry so that I can transform culture and employee engagement in construction or manufacturing. Like I want you to ground it in something that matters to you.
And you want to share it with a mentor, your partner, you want to post it on a milestone, you want to start a habit that symbolizes the future for yourself. Like for me, right? It was like, oh, this podcast is a way to expand my voice to 1000 women. The TED Talk is that way too. These become part of that. And for me, when I came up with my impossible goal, I started sharing it with my coaching group. I shared it with my family. And it helped me to get clear with myself.
Now, once you have your goal and you share it, create that positive pressure. The third thing is to act imperfectly but consistently. This is the power of having an impossible goal. It has you taking one aligned action, imperfect action every week, not to prove, but to learn. And for you to celebrate that progress over perfection. This is where that positive pressure comes into play. Like I actually told myself this week something like, whatever happens, I get to choose to be proud of myself and I get to choose to learn from this experience. There's a lot of things on my plate. I don't know how they're going to turn out, but the goal, my impossible goal helps me stay anchored and grounded in myself and it helps me know that I can handle whatever's going to happen on the other side of this. And I'm in this for the long run.
I think the impossible goal also helps you commit to something for the long run, so that even if something doesn't work, even if you have a failed launch, even if you have things that hit you off, you didn't get that role that's going to really help you to be that cultural change agent in the company, you find another way. It's not to say that you don't validate your emotions, but you don't stay in the drama or you don't indulge in the drama of it or the story of it.
You feel your pain, you feel your emotion, and you keep moving because that impossible goal is calling you. It is anchoring you. It is having you bounce back quicker. And every step you take reconditions your nervous system for more growth, not fear. You're really learning how to create that internal safety, that emotional capacity. Like, I can handle this, let's go. My goal is still there, it's waiting for me and it's me changing myself to be holding that goal, right? It's you building those muscles internally so that you are stronger and stronger and then that goal becomes less and less impossible as you work towards it.
And of course, it's so important to celebrate, to celebrate the mistakes, to celebrate the risks, to celebrate the gains. This celebration helps, right? Again, rewiring yourself to say, I am worthy of an impossible goal. I can make this happen. And I'll share with you when I got the call and I was asked to do this TED Talk, I actually allowed it to hit me. And I was like, wow, this is me manifesting my impossible goal. This is me allowing myself to be bold, be out there in the world, to have something on the TEDx stage with that name, right? That allows me to amplify my voice, to build my platform because I care so deeply about women and them reclaiming their anger and them feeling grounded in themselves and them giving themselves permission to feel their emotions and allow that to guide them.
And so I want to share with you celebration is really important and gratefulness is really important. And I don't know if you believe in God or the universe, but I totally believe that when you put something out there, your energy, your flow, things happen. You can do some things and then you need to also surrender to what happens around us, right? And both can happen at the same time. I'm not just sitting here manifesting things in a corner. I am at work, doing my talk, reaching out to people, letting people know how important it is. And I'm also leaving room for those miracles, leaving room for the universe to figure it out and come back to me. There's always space for that. And if you are a spiritual person, you can just also allow yourself to be open to that. But as soon as you claim an impossible goal, you're putting it out in the universe. And the more you connect to that goal, the more you're grounded by that goal, the more energy you put into it, it'll come back to you in some way.
Remember that your impossible goal isn't meant to feel comfortable. It's meant to wake you up, wake something up inside of you, because when women like us chase the impossible, we define what's possible for everyone watching. And that is super powerful, right? That is super powerful and grounded in yourself.
So, I want you to share this, share what your impossible goal is with me. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn, share it in a story, you can tag me on Instagram as well. But I want to celebrate your impossible goal. I'm also going to be doing a lot of celebrating the podcast this month because it is one year old. And I want to celebrate you for declaring what's next for you. It is not easy to say something that you want and that you care about deeply, but the more you say it, I will say that it's easier to live from this vision and from optimism and from hopefulness and from grounded authority within yourself than the old game of waiting for somebody to see you, waiting for somebody to invite you in, right?
You can wait and wait and wait. And that's where resentment can build up. That's where you can feel disconnected from yourself. That's where burnout starts like thriving in those spaces. But if you say to yourself, I am worthy of this impossible goal and you allow yourself to sit with it, to think about what that is, and then you allow that goal to lead you into your future self, this is powerful, people. This is going to change your life forever and I want you to take it seriously.
So go out there, use the positive pressure of your impossible goal to lead you. And if you have any questions, let me know. I'm here to help, I'm here to support you. If this touched you and you want to share it with other people in your life, please feel free. My mission, as you know, is to impact 1000 women a year, and part of that mission is lived through you, the ripple effect of you hearing something and you sharing it with another woman you care about, another part of your community that you're in and that you want other people to have this felt experience of both yourself and themselves. This is why it's so impactful to really own and believe in an impossible goal. It gives you permission and it gives other people permission.
All right, have a beautiful week ahead, and I'd love to hear from you. Take really great care and I'll see you next week for our next episode. Take care. Bye.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
Welcome to The Balanced Leader, hosted by Yann Dang, a Leadership and Life Coach with over 20 years of corporate experience. Drawing from her journey as a former global finance leader and second-generation immigrant, Yann understands the unique challenges women face in male-dominated workplaces.
Each episode offers insights on balancing masculine and feminine energies, mastering soft skills, and building emotional intelligence. Join us to transform frustration into empowerment and unlock your authentic leadership potential.
Hey podcast listeners, welcome to today's episode. We are talking about the positive power of impossible goals. And I wanted to just share something that I'm really proud of, and I also wanted to thank you all. The Balanced Leader turns 1 this month. So about a year ago, I had also this sort of impossible goal to start this podcast to really impact more women. So that what I'm teaching to women to help women lead with more presence and power could be out there in the world on demand at any time for anyone around the world, right? So that they had a resource to listen to, to have some tools to start impacting the way that they're showing up, especially in male-dominated spaces.
And I'm so proud to say that we are 2% globally ranked as a podcast. I thank you for being part of the community, for sharing it with other folks, and being part of this movement with me. This milestone is really what I think about as an impossible goal as part of my thought process around having an impossible goal, which for me is really about impacting over 1000 women a year to really make substantial changes in their life.
And so today I want to talk about why impossible goals matter, and not just for what you achieve, but who you become. And I'm going to share deeply and vulnerably in this conversation about my own journey with impossible goals and how it's so different than how I really thought about goals for myself when I was more in the corporate world and when I was, you know, even in school. I want to share what it is to be in an impossible goal, to be worthy of an impossible goal, and what happens when you decide to have an impossible goal and why it is so motivating in the positive way for you.
So, let's start talking about what an impossible goal is. And I want to reference the work of Tracy Goss. She wrote a book called The Last Word on Power. I'm actually going to be doing a power series based on the book where I'm going to be teaching a lot about the main goals of the book and the main teachings of the book, so you don't have to go and read the whole thing. But watch out for that. That's going to be something that's going to come in the near future.
So, let me tell you what I think of as an impossible goal. An impossible goal isn't something you don't know how to do. It's something that requires you to become someone you've never been before. So let me read that again. An impossible goal isn't something you don't know how to do, it's something that requires you to become someone you never been before, right?
So, what happens in an impossible goal is it really has you thinking about what is possible versus what's impossible. Oftentimes, and this is one of the reasons why women don't take as many risk and women are actually not getting that many roles or not being as visible or advocating for themselves as much, because often times women are using who they were in the past to define what goals feel reasonable and realistic in the present moment. And what that has us doing is instead of expanding, it has us contracting for control.
So when you think about what is possible, it's typically driven by evidence, experience, and safety. Well, I did this before, so I can stretch a little and do more of this. It is the thinking that has us taking baby steps, and I'm all about baby steps, but this impossible goal helps us believe beyond that baby step, and it has us taking more risk, and it has us being more activated and aligned to what we're doing.
So this possible goal is more about realism. Like, what is possible. And this is why a lot of women don't apply for jobs that they feel like they can't do or they don't have 100% of the qualifications for, because they're living in what's possible from the past. And instead of thinking about what they're capable of and what they're qualified to do because they can learn, they can grow, they often times use their past experience and what they've done in the past as a way to have themselves contract. If they didn't do it in the past and they don't have experience with it, even though they know that they can learn and they're capable, they put more emphasis on their past experience. And then they talk themselves out of doing bigger roles, bigger jobs.
Versus when you think about impossibility, right? Impossible goals, things that haven't happened yet, it helps you open up your mind creatively and it is really driven by creation. What is it that you're aligned to? What are you engaged in? It's more about an identity shift, and it's future based thinking. It's allowing your future self to lead you in the current moment versus allowing your past self to lead you in the current moment. Because if you allowed your past self, like even for me, as an entrepreneur, if I allowed my past self to be programming me now or informing me now, I would just be thinking about the corporate world and what I was able to achieve in the construct of the corporate world.
Whereas I am an entrepreneur, right? And my future is to be an entrepreneur, and the games are totally different. The rules are totally different. The landscape is expansive. And if I allow myself to be led by my future version of myself, then there's just more space. There is more fear that comes up for me, of course, having an open canvas, but there is more space for me to create and to shift into a next level identity.
I want to share with you, you know, last year, at the end of last year, I read this book, again, The Last Word on Power, and it's about executive reinvention, and it's about how you look at yourself and where you've been and where you want to go. It's for people who have been highly successful where they are, but they want that next level goal that's going to uplevel them, that is really about their identity. It's about their legacy, it's about what's next for them. And often times if you've been really successful, you don't want to break that pattern, right? Or you don't want to break the rules of what created that success. But in order to reinvent yourself, part of this is to let go of whatever winning strategy you had.
So again, in the corporate world, I played it safe. I was often times not taking as many risks. I took risk from a corporate standpoint, but from an entrepreneurial standpoint, the game is very different. I am investing my own capital. I am deciding, making a lot of choices, not from, you know, evidence from the past, but really from like what I believe is possible and what I believe is needed from the women that I coach.
So my example, as I really thought about this impossible goal for myself at the end of last year, I really thought what I would love to do and be able to do and really is a goal that's worthy of my time and energy and that I'm activated and connected to it was to serve 1000 women a year, to make an impact to 1000 women a year through my coaching, through my speaking. That was my mission. And I thought, well, if this is my mission, it totally informs the way that I show up in the world and my thought leadership and how big and bold I am in the world.
So my personal example of this, obviously I was a little scared. I'm like, okay, what is this going to look like? But the things that I decided to do this year and what I want to share with you that I'm very excited about was to really expand my thought leadership. So I became a contributor for Forbes. I was invited to write for them and I said yes to that. And I had also decided earlier this year that I wanted to do a TED Talk. After seeing some of my friends and colleagues do it, I said, you know, this is a way for me to serve over 1000 women and to have my message go out there about reclaiming anger.
Now, if you've listened to some of my podcast episodes before, you know that I feel strongly about emotions, especially anger, and women who are grounded and connected to their anger are the ones that are thriving in this male dominated spaces. And so I started that and I'll tell you, it was a process. I wrote the talk, I applied, I got rejected, I applied, I, you know, I changed up my talk a little bit. I kept like massaging it. And I needed to bounce back and a lot of what helped me bounce back was this idea, this goal of impacting 1000 women. I was like, I can't just stop here. I can't just give up. I have this amazing talk that I want to share with the world.
And what happened was, you know, when you have this, this desire and you're reaching out to people, a woman who's coordinating and launching this TEDx Union Women Talk in New Jersey actually reached out to me after, you know, I had reached out to her and other people letting them know I have this bold talk to share. And she wanted to know more about the talk. And I am so excited to share that I'm going to be doing a TED Talk at November 5th. So very shortly after recording this, a week from now, I'm going to be on a stage doing a talk about reclaiming anger.
And again, it is because I have this impossible goal, this mission, it helps to activate me. And even though, you know, people are like, aren't you scared to be on the stage? Aren't you scared about, you know, all these things in your life? You've got such a big life. I have two little kids, I have a husband with a demanding job. And I'm like, yeah, there's a lot of things, but I'm grounded. I'm deeply grounded in the mission that I want to be delivering. I'm deeply grounded in making it work. I'm deeply committed to it.
And when you're committed to something deeply, right? You figure it out. You do what you need to shift things. You let go of mom guilt if that's in your way. You let go of, you know, judging yourself. You let go of a lot of things to move that mission forward. And so that's where I'm at. You know, this is where I'm at with my talk. And so I share this with you because I want you to be thinking about this and the power of this, right? Because there's real emotional science behind this.
The way that I talk about positive pressure is totally the opposite of negative pressure, but let me define what it is versus what it isn't, right? So first, what is it? Positive pressure isn't hustle. It's the energy that comes when you're deeply connected to your legacy and willing to act before you feel ready. Do I feel ready to do X, Y, and Z? Not always, right? But I'm willing to act. I'm willing to do the thing, and I'm willing to allow those emotions to come up because this is part of that transformation process. When you go and do something new, you're going to have feelings. You're going to have lots more feelings, and you get to decide how to act even with those feelings and with those feelings as part of the process, right?
So let me tell you the difference between positive pressure and pressure that isn't aligned with you, pressure that's coming from external and you trying to run after that external validation. Endless action with no connection to yourself gets you to burnout. I talk to a lot of women and they come to me, they feel so disconnected from themselves. They feel like they're full of task and logistics, and they feel like they are losing control and they feel like, why did I do certain things? Because when we don't have a goal that we're working towards, other people's agenda becomes our agenda.
We just create space to get stuff done, and we say this is what needs to happen. This is why a lot of corporate people find themselves in burnout because a corporate environment is relentless. It will ask of you, it will ask of you, it will ask of you. That's its job, right? And a job of a leader often times is to push anxiety downwards so that work gets done. When I'm saying anxiety, I'm actually mean like deliverables and like problems, right? It needs to get done.
And you can do it in a way that is intentional, aligned with yourself, connected to yourself. And this is where people are like, I love to work hard and play hard, but that play is really that connection to yourself, right? This is the opposite of burnout. Burnout is when you're so disconnected from yourself, you're just doing, doing, doing and you become this doing person and you are not balanced. You're not connected to that deeper yearning inside. You're not connected to why does this matter for you personally.
And so the contrast is intentional, imperfect action with deep connection. And this is what transformation is. Your ability to keep going, moving forward, but really with that mission and that purpose in mind, that deep connection with yourself. And the reason why positive pressure sharpens focus and resiliency is when you're deeply connected to that thing, you bounce back faster. You stop overthinking and you start reiterating, you start trying out new things. You don't make the thing that you wanted and you didn't get something bad about yourself. You're less likely to internalize it because you've got this mission, this moving forward, and you're just more seeing this as a almost like a playground for you to learn and bounce back and still stay committed and connected to yourself and your vision. You move through discomfort with purpose instead of panic.
This is how grounded leaders operate, not from urgency, but from alignment. They use pressure as presence. They allow that pressure to hit them in a way that brings them, wakes them up, has them connected to themselves, not like beating themselves up. And so this identity shift happens. These impossible goals force you to build that internal safety and that emotional capacity.
Listen, this is me too. I literally told my coach a couple of weeks ago, whoa, I feel like all this terror inside of me. I'm doing this TED talk, I'm doing a launch, I'm doing all these new things, I'm testing out all these new things, I'm learning all these new things. I feel terror in my body. And what it has me doing is facing the terror and have me having a relationship with it, right? It's not about achieving faster, it's about expanding who you are becoming in the process. And it expands your skill set. If you've got such a big goal for yourself, you are going to have emotions.
So, when I first set my impossible goal of serving 1000 women a year, I had to become a woman who could see, right, be seen, lead boldly, and make offers to help people unapologetically. And I'm still doing it every single day. I'm building this muscle. This is how I do it through the podcast, through all of the ways that I connect with you. Every time I take imperfect action towards that vision, I strengthen the muscle of belief. And that terror inside of me, I have a relationship with it and I say, I know it feels scary, but we're going to move ahead and we're connected and we believe in what we're doing. And when we believe in what we're doing, we're really grounded in ourselves.
And that groundedness helps to create that internal safety. And every time I do it, that fear feels less and less because it's like my body's kind of like, it's unsafe, something's going to happen. But the more I do it, the more I see, actually, I'm still here, I'm still breathing. I had lots of emotions, maybe I had a headache here or there, but I'm okay. I am able to build that emotional capacity and that internal safety for myself because I'm grounded in this impossible goal for me.
So grounded ambition isn't about speed. It's about alignment, acting from your future self, not your fear. And I want to share a client example because I've been working with this client for about six months now. And what she realized was she wasn't actually that activated or engaged in her work. She was like headed for burnout. She was like, I need to find a new job. And really what she was doing was running away from the pressure because she didn't have a strong goal for herself. She wasn't connected to the work she was doing and she didn't have this impossible goal that she cared deeply about.
And here's the thing, when you have an impossible goal that you care deeply about, it actually doesn't matter if you achieve the goal or not. I know it sounds super weird because we're in this like very masculine society that we're like, achieve that goal, get that thing, you know, do that, get that gold medal. But the reality is the gift of an impossible goal is who you become in the process. And who you become in the process, no one can take that away from you. It's not like to be measured or judged for anything. It is for you to have that impossible goal that you're moving towards that you feel like you're somebody worthy of holding that impossible goal and so deeply connected to it that you keep moving forward, no matter what.
So, how to get started? And I want you to think about this again. This is a way to activate yourself. This is a way to get you playing in a game that's for you. So the first thing is to declare the impossible goal, right? Name the thing you deeply desire but secretly doubt. And listen, you can change this. You can play with this, and it can be external to you, but it can also be internal to you. So let me give you some examples.
You want to name the thing you deeply desire but secretly doubt. Don't choose something that feels logical. If you're doing that, then you are again using your past self to inform your current and future self. We want you to choose something that feels electric. We want you to choose something that, you know, has you deeply connected but also scared. Like if you're not scared of this goal, then it's not big enough. That's probably what you've heard before.
So ask yourself, who would I have to become to make this inevitable, right? Because that is the process here. That is the play here. Impossible goals aren't just about your career leaps. They're also about cultural shifts, things that you deeply care about. But sometimes, you know, I know a lot of women, they care about these cultural shifts, but they don't really know how to do it in real time, right? How to be connected to it. So this is again, why the impossible goal is important, right? It's about becoming the woman who changes how leadership feels for everyone who comes after her. Maybe your impossible goal is becoming an industry leader who redefines what power looks like, especially in your male dominated space. Right? I have a lot of clients they're in manufacturing, in construction, and a lot of these spaces need their leadership.
And I'm not just going to say it's like the feminine leadership. It's the feminine plus the masculine leadership, the synergy of both, and they need it, right? I just talked to somebody this week who was like, I know I'm making an impact, and people know it too, but I feel like it's like not that important, but people say it's important, right? She actually planned a meeting, and the meeting was in a really beautiful space and she created vision around it and she created a vibe of collaboration and it got the job done even quicker. And people felt like they were part of something, right? Not just a bunch of vendors coming together to do something, right?
They felt like they were being onboarded in a way that, you know, had them feeling open and wanting to be there, and it was in a beautiful space. And these are all things that I think often times people discount in our society, especially in our very masculine society. Like this feminine energy, this vision holding, this really curating spaces for collaboration. This is powerful stuff. But if you don't see it as powerful, you will also discount it, right? And you may not actually see how powerful your power is when you discount it because you are judging it in some way.
So part of this is shifting the culture in your organization, but also shifting your views and values within yourself, so that you're starting to amplify and see the things that you are capable of doing. So one of these things, it could even be that your impossible goal is to shift cultures, but you're going to allow yourself to do it in so many different ways. And it might be amplifying other women's voices, but it starts with your own voice. Like how can I step into that more and more and model that for other people?
It could also be something internal. Finally trusting yourself enough to lead without apology, trusting your gut, knowing, hey, I'm going to lead in more and more of this way. Whatever it is, your impossible goal isn't supposed to like make sense to other people. It's really about making sense to yourself and it's supposed to make you new, make your identity about yourself and how you show up in the world different. And this creates positive pressure because you are anchored into it.
And once you have your goal, it's really important to create that positive pressure by sharing it with people. Set one public commitment or accountability anchor that helps you connect. Letting people know I have a vision of being a thought leader in this industry so that I can transform culture and employee engagement in construction or manufacturing. Like I want you to ground it in something that matters to you.
And you want to share it with a mentor, your partner, you want to post it on a milestone, you want to start a habit that symbolizes the future for yourself. Like for me, right? It was like, oh, this podcast is a way to expand my voice to 1000 women. The TED Talk is that way too. These become part of that. And for me, when I came up with my impossible goal, I started sharing it with my coaching group. I shared it with my family. And it helped me to get clear with myself.
Now, once you have your goal and you share it, create that positive pressure. The third thing is to act imperfectly but consistently. This is the power of having an impossible goal. It has you taking one aligned action, imperfect action every week, not to prove, but to learn. And for you to celebrate that progress over perfection. This is where that positive pressure comes into play. Like I actually told myself this week something like, whatever happens, I get to choose to be proud of myself and I get to choose to learn from this experience. There's a lot of things on my plate. I don't know how they're going to turn out, but the goal, my impossible goal helps me stay anchored and grounded in myself and it helps me know that I can handle whatever's going to happen on the other side of this. And I'm in this for the long run.
I think the impossible goal also helps you commit to something for the long run, so that even if something doesn't work, even if you have a failed launch, even if you have things that hit you off, you didn't get that role that's going to really help you to be that cultural change agent in the company, you find another way. It's not to say that you don't validate your emotions, but you don't stay in the drama or you don't indulge in the drama of it or the story of it.
You feel your pain, you feel your emotion, and you keep moving because that impossible goal is calling you. It is anchoring you. It is having you bounce back quicker. And every step you take reconditions your nervous system for more growth, not fear. You're really learning how to create that internal safety, that emotional capacity. Like, I can handle this, let's go. My goal is still there, it's waiting for me and it's me changing myself to be holding that goal, right? It's you building those muscles internally so that you are stronger and stronger and then that goal becomes less and less impossible as you work towards it.
And of course, it's so important to celebrate, to celebrate the mistakes, to celebrate the risks, to celebrate the gains. This celebration helps, right? Again, rewiring yourself to say, I am worthy of an impossible goal. I can make this happen. And I'll share with you when I got the call and I was asked to do this TED Talk, I actually allowed it to hit me. And I was like, wow, this is me manifesting my impossible goal. This is me allowing myself to be bold, be out there in the world, to have something on the TEDx stage with that name, right? That allows me to amplify my voice, to build my platform because I care so deeply about women and them reclaiming their anger and them feeling grounded in themselves and them giving themselves permission to feel their emotions and allow that to guide them.
And so I want to share with you celebration is really important and gratefulness is really important. And I don't know if you believe in God or the universe, but I totally believe that when you put something out there, your energy, your flow, things happen. You can do some things and then you need to also surrender to what happens around us, right? And both can happen at the same time. I'm not just sitting here manifesting things in a corner. I am at work, doing my talk, reaching out to people, letting people know how important it is. And I'm also leaving room for those miracles, leaving room for the universe to figure it out and come back to me. There's always space for that. And if you are a spiritual person, you can just also allow yourself to be open to that. But as soon as you claim an impossible goal, you're putting it out in the universe. And the more you connect to that goal, the more you're grounded by that goal, the more energy you put into it, it'll come back to you in some way.
Remember that your impossible goal isn't meant to feel comfortable. It's meant to wake you up, wake something up inside of you, because when women like us chase the impossible, we define what's possible for everyone watching. And that is super powerful, right? That is super powerful and grounded in yourself.
So, I want you to share this, share what your impossible goal is with me. Feel free to DM me on LinkedIn, share it in a story, you can tag me on Instagram as well. But I want to celebrate your impossible goal. I'm also going to be doing a lot of celebrating the podcast this month because it is one year old. And I want to celebrate you for declaring what's next for you. It is not easy to say something that you want and that you care about deeply, but the more you say it, I will say that it's easier to live from this vision and from optimism and from hopefulness and from grounded authority within yourself than the old game of waiting for somebody to see you, waiting for somebody to invite you in, right?
You can wait and wait and wait. And that's where resentment can build up. That's where you can feel disconnected from yourself. That's where burnout starts like thriving in those spaces. But if you say to yourself, I am worthy of this impossible goal and you allow yourself to sit with it, to think about what that is, and then you allow that goal to lead you into your future self, this is powerful, people. This is going to change your life forever and I want you to take it seriously.
So go out there, use the positive pressure of your impossible goal to lead you. And if you have any questions, let me know. I'm here to help, I'm here to support you. If this touched you and you want to share it with other people in your life, please feel free. My mission, as you know, is to impact 1000 women a year, and part of that mission is lived through you, the ripple effect of you hearing something and you sharing it with another woman you care about, another part of your community that you're in and that you want other people to have this felt experience of both yourself and themselves. This is why it's so impactful to really own and believe in an impossible goal. It gives you permission and it gives other people permission.
All right, have a beautiful week ahead, and I'd love to hear from you. Take really great care and I'll see you next week for our next episode. Take care. Bye.
Thank you for being a part of The Balanced Leader community. We hope you found today's episode inspiring and actionable. For more resources and to connect with Yann, visit us at aspire-coaching.co. Until next time, keep leading with confidence and purpose.
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