4.19 How to pursue goals that you’re not sure are possible

It’s a time of year where lots of people are setting goals, worrying about which goals to set, and then beating themselves up if they don’t meet them. In this episode, I answer a question I was asked about how to set goals when you’re not sure they’re possible. I share five ways to evaluate big audacious goals to see if they could be a good fit for you and then share two skills that you’ll need to develop in order to pursue a goal that has the potential to be unrealistic! It’s the perfect episode if you have a tempting big goal on your mind!

If you liked this episode, you should check out my episode on how to achieve your goals using the self-coaching model. 

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I'm Dr Vikki Wright, ex-Professor and certified life coach and I help everyone from PhD students to full Professors to get a bit less overwhelmed and thrive in academia. Please make sure you subscribe, and I would love it if you could find time to rate, review and tell your friends! You can send them this universal link that will work whatever the podcast app they use. http://pod.link/1650551306?i=1000695434464

I also host a free online community for academics at every level. You can sign up on my website, The PhD Life Coach. com - you'll receive regular emails with helpful tips and access to free online group coaching every single month! Come join and get the support you need.

Transcript

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to the first episode of 2026 for the PhD Life Coach Podcast. I am genuinely feeling really excited about this year. I've got some really cool stuff coming up in the business for the PhD Life Coach membership and some more free stuff that's gonna be happening soon. So keep an eye out for that.

If you are new to the podcast and you are wondering what the PhD life coach membership is, it is my quarterly program for PhD students where you get all the support that you feel like you're currently lacking. You get an active community. You get a place where you can talk about all those questions that seem a bit stupid, but actually really hold you back, where you can help yourself to reduce your procrastination, reduce how overwhelmed you feel, and actually change your PhD journey so that you can enjoy it and have the PhD experience that you wanted. If you wanna find out more, you can it's all on my website. The PhD life coach.com. And there's [00:01:00] gonna be a launch at the end of January, so I'll be taking new members in the last week in January. So keep an eye on that.

If you're not already on my newsletter, make sure that you sign up so you hear all about it. If you already have your PhD, you are also so, so welcome here. This podcast is here for people all the way from the very, very beginnings of their academic careers through to the very end and beyond. Much of the time, the stuff we're struggling with is exactly the same stuff. It's sort of two sides of the same coin, and I certainly intend this podcast to be a support for everybody across the board in academia. There may also even be a few listeners who are not academics at all. That's okay too. You are very, very welcome. The stuff I talk about is pretty universal. You'll have to forgive some of the framing that makes it very specific to the weird world of academia, but most of the rest of it is pretty relevant to everyone. So you are welcome here too.

Anyway. With that out the way, it is time to think about goals, and it's a time of year where we're [00:02:00] all pondering this stuff, right? Maybe you've already set New Year's resolutions. Maybe you've already stopped following some of your New Year's resolutions. It happens. Here's your reminder to reengage. All good to reengage,. But today we're gonna think about one specific question that I was actually asked at one of my very rare live events. So I was doing a talk about decision making and careers in London and I was approached afterwards by a very nice PhD student who said, you know, I really, really enjoyed your talk and everything, but how do I decide whether to pursue a goal or not when I'm not sure whether I can meet that goal? And I thought this was such an interesting question. We had a really interesting discussion about it that I thought I would elaborate on it in the podcast here.

So in that workshop, I talk a lot about making decisions based on reasons you love. So if you choose to pursue a goal, for example, you're doing it for reasons that you really, really like. But her point was, [00:03:00] don't you need to know, or at least be reasonably confident you can achieve a goal before you set it as a goal and the example she gave was being Prime Minister. She was like, yeah, imagine, imagine I want to be Prime Minister. How can I set that for myself as a goal when I've got no idea how that could be possible? I've got, you know, there's no reason to believe that would be possible. It's so big, it's so ambitious. It's all these things. How, how could I ever set that as a goal? Now, I think she underestimated my sport science background. So having come through a 22, 3, whatever years it was, career in sport and exercise sciences, I am very used to people setting ludicrous long-term goals. So the number of my personal tutees, who intended at some point to be Olympic gold medal winners or to internationally represent their team, win the World Cup, whatever it might be, was huge, loads of them. Okay. It's one [00:04:00] things you find with when you're teaching sport scientists. Loads of them are elite athletes themselves as well. And so the notion of having a goal that is outlandish, is audacious, is not that unusual in that sort of a setting. But what this discussion did for me was it allowed me to sort of step back and go, okay, well, in whatever context it is, how would you decide that you want to make that your goal and how would you go about achieving it? And for some of you in academic context, that goal might be being a full tenured professor, for example, which for many is like the pinnacle of an academic career. So what I wanna talk with you today is like an expanded version of that conversation that we had, where I give you five ways to assess the goal, and then two skills that I think you need to develop, in order to make [00:05:00] these big outlandish goals a reality. So the first way to assess the journey is we have to really think about what would be the route to that outlandish goal. And this is the process we went through with her example of being Prime Minister. Right? So we went through, it's like, okay, so you wanna be a Prime Minister. If you wanna be a Prime Minister in the uk, you have to be an mp, right? I think that's true. You might need, I can you be in the House of Lords? I dunno, internationals. It's a weird system over here. But anyway, the map, you're not gonna just randomly be in the House of Lords, the best way to be Prime Minister is to be a member of Parliament. How do you become a member of Parliament? You get elected. How do you get elected? You have to participate in an election. How do you participate in an election where you have to be nominated by your party? So you have to be involved in the local party and be chosen as a representative. How do you get involved in your local party? Well, you tell them you want to be involved and you start doing things.

And so then as you go through this conversation, it's like, okay, so what's the goal here that does [00:06:00] feel achievable? Now if you know what political party you support, then a goal could be get involved with your local political party, and I'd want you to, you know, in the interest of making these things more specific, I want you to then define for yourself what that would actually mean. What does involved look like for you? But that would be the first step and those would be the things that you would need to go through. 

And this does two things, right? First of all, it gives you a route by which it feels a little bit more achievable because we don't even have to decide at this point that we definitely want to be Prime Minister. We just have to decide that we've got a vague goal of being Prime Minister, and our specific goal for this year is to do X and Y with my local political party. Now, of course if you're sitting there going, I don't even know what, like what political party represents me at the moment. I get you. Okay. Seriously there too. But the first steps for you then would be to work out how you're gonna determine [00:07:00] which political party you want to get involved with. You know, do you wanna do some sort of like visiting system where you try different things? Do you want to talk to more people? Do you wanna read more? What would it be? Okay.

But the first thing this does is it makes it a little bit more achievable and gives you goals that are on the way to that big notional goal. And note, remember, at this point, we don't have to decide for 100%. That is definitely the thing we're working towards. But if it were, these would be interim goals, so we can focus on those.

The second thing it does is it enables you to decide whether you actually like the look of that journey, because if you are somebody that, for example, uh, has a lot of opinions about how the country should be run and likes telling people what to do, I mean, I dunno why you're looking at me here. Um, you might think, oh, being Prime Minister would be fun. But when I think through that step by step process of like, okay, I'm gonna have join a local political party, and then I'm gonna have to win people around there, and I'm gonna have to build a reputation and I'm gonna have [00:08:00] to talk to lots of people who I don't necessarily agree with, and I'm gonna have to doorstep and I'm gonna have to do this, and I'm gonna have to do that. I'm like, no. No, no. This is also why, um, I, I no longer set myself running goals. Okay? I absolutely love running events. And I have a very bad habit that when I finish a running event, I decide that I definitely want to book another running event and next time I'm gonna train properly. But the problem is when I look at the actual process of being a good runner, I don't want that bit the, I have to still run when I don't feel like running and I have to go out in the rain and I have to spend X number of hours a week running. I don't want that bit. I just like turning up and doing the shiny bit and prancing around. So I now pick running events where you can run as little or as far as you want. So kind of checkpoint based adventure racing, 'cause then if you don't feel like it that day, you don't run as much, but you still take part. It's great. Love it. Anyway. So you get to look at that journey and go, is that actually a journey that feels like it would be fun? Okay, so you get to assess that [00:09:00] journey.

I said there were five things. So the first is identifying that journey and deciding whether you even like the look of it. The second is to check in with yourself that the journey is inherently valuable even if you don't make the ultimate goal. So we want to try and pick big inspiring goals that the journey is worthwhile, even if we don't make it all the way so, sticking with my being Prime Minister 'cause it's more fun than talking about having to be full professor. Um, sticking with my idea of being Prime Minister, does it feel like I would get a lot out of, not just enjoy, I would benefit from the process of becoming Prime Minister? Would it enable me to develop in ways that I want to develop? Would it be inherently valuable for me as a [00:10:00] person? What we wanna avoid are goals that are only amazing if we hit them and are a disaster if we don't. Yeah. Sometimes you see this, I do think sport has become a lot more psychologically informed over the last 10 years than it ever was when I grew up. And so you see a lot more of this kind of journey based, participation based narrative, not where we are not trying to win, right? We're not going back to times where it's like, oh, it's all taking part that matters, but it's the recognition of what you get outta striving to be better than you were, what you get out of that dedication and commitment. But back in the day you would see people that would say things like, you know, second is the first loser and anything other than first is a fail and blah, blah, blah. And that puts an enormous amount of pressure and actually sets the goal up as something that if you don't achieve it, then all the efforts have not been worthwhile. I want you to choose big audacious [00:11:00] goals that the journey is inherently valuable. So as an example, let's say you do pick a big audacious academic goal, like becoming full professor, I want you to be sure that that journey that you are getting what you want out of your PhD experience. You're getting what you want out of your postdoc experience, out of your early academic career, et cetera, et cetera, so that if at any stage it's either not possible to achieve your goal or you choose not to achieve your goal, that you have still got a lot out of that experience. 

The third thing I want you to consider is, does this big goal use your strengths? Okay. All of us have strengths and weaknesses. One of the things I've noticed in academia is we are typically very bad at recognizing our strengths. We're typically really good at telling people what our weaknesses are. We are really good at setting resolutions to fix and improve our weaknesses. So little note, if all your [00:12:00] resolutions are about fixing things you're not good at, at the moment, you might wanna have a little tiny reconsider as we're still at the beginning of the year. And instead, we wanna think about things where they really maximize and use strengths that we have. Really maximize the things that we find easier than other people, where we have the potential to be seriously amazing where we are looking at honing talents, rather than fixing our weak points. So have a look at any of these big goals that you might have and think, does this play to the best parts of me? Now, some of you will have listened to my previous episode from just last week, week before. Can't remember. Recently, let's say, um, where I talked about why I left academia. For a long time, academia played to my strengths for a long time as I was pursuing my sort of career as I was trying to working way up the academic ladder, I was really valued for the things that I was good at. I was able to use [00:13:00] those strengths to succeed, and I was recognized and it was amazing. Loved it. But I realized that towards the end of my career that actually the next steps, the things that were the logical follow on for me, didn't play to my strengths and would be me trying to kind of fix weaknesses. I was perfectly capable of doing them. And if I'd wanted to pursue that goal, then I could have done, but it no longer felt like I was maximizing my strengths and instead felt like I was having to become somebody that I wasn't actually that fussed about becoming. So check in that these goals will really use your strengths.

The fourth element is I want you to think about your reasons. We always want goals to be intrinsically driven. We want to be trying to achieve goals because either we value. The benefits of them or preferably that they are fun and engaging and part of who we are [00:14:00] really intrinsically motivated rather than goals that are to do with the rewards you'll get from it, earning lots of money or whatever, or because of societal or closer expectations that other people telling you, or indeed you telling you that you should do this. There is a huge body of literature talking about the importance of intrinsic motivation for goal success, for goal adherence, for enjoying that journey, for psychological wellbeing whilst trying to achieve the goals. So when you've got these big goals. Just double check. Where do they come from? Are they shoulds or are they things that you intrinsically value and want to pursue? 

The fifth one then is more of a like little check-in, which is to what extent have you got capacity to engage with this goal at the moment? So there's nothing wrong with having huge goals that will take you 10, 20, 30 years to achieve. In fact, I think that can be quite [00:15:00] fun and exciting, but you also need to check in with what capacity you have to engage with it at the moment. And I think in my view, there's always time to engage at at least some level. So maybe you wanna be Prime Minister, but at the moment you are doing your PhD, you've got two young children and whatever else, maybe, I'm not saying for sure, but maybe you are not in the greatest of positions to start being like a active member of your local political party. But maybe this is where you listen to political podcasts. Maybe this is where you make friends with people who are interested in politics, so you can actually have discussions about these things so that you build elements of this journey that fit with your current capacity.

Then we start looking ahead to when might my capacity change or when could I change my capacity? But bearing in mind that sort of little element of realism so that we're not telling ourselves we should be doing something that we don't have capacity for. [00:16:00] Okay. So those are my five ways I want you to think about the journey. I want you to identify what the steps are so that you can actually build it back to being a more proximal goal, and check in that you actually wanna do those things.

Two, I want you to make sure that the journey is inherently valuable, even if you don't get to the destination. What will you get out of the journey by pursuing it? What will you learn about yourself? What will you develop in yourself?

Third, I want you to make sure as using your strengths so that you're not trying to fix things about yourself. That your goal is helping you become the best version of the bits of you that are already brilliant.

Four. I want you to think about the quality of the motivation. Make sure that it's intrinsically driven from your values, your beliefs, the things that you love to do rather than things that people tell you you should do or in order just to get rewards. I always worry when people tell me they're doing a PhD, primarily either for the authority and recognition that the title will [00:17:00] give them, or because their mom or dad always dreamed of them having a PhD. I always worry about it. If that's you, it's not the end of the world, but I would really encourage you to develop other reasons, for doing it.

And then the fifth one is, what capacity do you have to engage? And so when you're thinking about those sort of more proximal steps, making that appropriate to the life you are living at the moment is really, really useful.

Okay, so if you've still got a big goal in mind and you've run it through those things, what are the two other skills that I want you to develop?

The first is tolerance of uncertainty. So one of the things that I see a lot is that people would find it easier to work on something if they know it's going to happen. So if you knew your article was gonna get published, it can be a lot easier to work on it than if you are trying to work on it, not knowing whether it's ever gonna get published or not. The problem is that almost all [00:18:00] interesting goals are at least somewhat uncertain. Okay? Because otherwise we'd just be doing them. And so one of the things that I would want you to develop is the ability to be unsure and to work towards it anyway, and this is useful in a whole variety of settings.

Any of you who find that you get a bit needy in relationships, I used to get very needy in relationships, friendships as well as romantic ones, and you'd be uncertain whether that person likes you, uncertain whether they, you know, feel the same way you do or whatever. There's nothing about trying to get more certain that makes you more attractive or makes you a more interesting friend. You have to be able to engage in a relationship whilst being uncertain as to how it's gonna go, being uncertain how they feel about you, and showing up the way you want to show up. And then it will become clear one way or another. It will either become clear they don't treat you the way you want to be treated, in which case we get to move on. [00:19:00] Or that actually it is reciprocated and it's a beautiful thing.

But when we try and get that certainty, does my supervisor think I'm good? Does my supervisor think I'm doing enough? Does my supervisor think I'm good enough? Then we start turning up like a bit of a weirdo. We wanna be certain that I'm capable of doing my PhD, certain that I'm capable of getting promotion. Whereas what I want us to be is to be like, okay, I have no idea. But if I was gonna get it, these are the things I need to do and I can be okay on the way I can look after myself through the uncertainty.

One of the things we talk about in the membership quite a lot is about not trying to fix your emotions with actions. Now, there's a few exceptions to that. I'm a big fan of dancing, walking, fresh air, those sorts of things to improve and enhance your emotions in those sorts of ways, but the majority of the time we're best off being able to go, you know what? I'm a bit anxious 'cause I'm uncertain. I can look after anxiety, but these are the steps I need to [00:20:00] take. These are the things I need to do as if I was more certain.

And then the second skill that I want you to develop is the ability to disengage from a goal when you want to. So I mentioned that I have this sports science background. One of the most unhealthy things, I think, is when people start getting into, um, you know, the only way I'm not achieving this goal is if I'm dead. You'll have to carry me out of here before I don't follow this goal, and it's just, it all sounds very dramatic and it all sounds very like, oh my God, you're so committed. And it's like, no, that's stupid. I'm sorry. I love you if that's the way you thought yourself, but it's so stupid. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when they feel difficult. Yes, we wanna pursue goals even when we're like, oh, what have I done?

But we have to have a point at which we say, you know what? The journey's not making me [00:21:00] happy anymore. You know what? This isn't even the direction that I want to be traveling in anymore. We have to have a point at which we can disengage with goals, not interpret it as a massive failure, and choose to go in a different direction.

Now, if you are somebody you know who's already given up on your news resolutions, for example, that's not what I'm talking about. I'm not talking about hitting one bump and deciding this goal doesn't count anymore. Or not recording what you eat because you're eating things you don't want to eat or giving up on your goal of reading however many articles 'cause you haven't stuck to it. Whatever. That's not what I'm talking about.

But there is also a point at which this thing you've always dreamed of, whether that is a qualification, whether it's a job, whether it's a relationship, whatever it might be, the pursuit of it isn't serving you anymore. And it's useful to know that you can leave at any point. You can choose [00:22:00] not to follow that goal. And you might think, well, if I acknowledge that, then I'd just leave. And if that's your thought, i'd have some sensible considerations about whether maybe you should be leaving, but actually it can also give a bunch of freedom. A lot of the PhD students in my membership will say to me, knowing that I am choosing to continue that actually I could leave my PhD if I wanted to. Knowing that I'm choosing to continue actually empowers me. I don't feel trapped anymore because I know I could leave if I want to. It's why I believe that everybody in a relationship should always be financially independent so that they could leave if they needed to. Okay. It's my little feminist agenda drilled into me by my mother from a young age.

Knowing that you could disengage is also the ultimate freedom to pick a massive outlandish goal because it doesn't have to be a massive deal if you get partway down the journey and decide that actually [00:23:00] something else serves you more. So those are my five ways that you can assess your big goals, your two skills that you'll need to develop to kind of pursue that journey.

I would love, if you're not already on my newsletter, sign off for my newsletter and tell me what big outlandish goals you have either for this year or for like the next five, 10 years, things that you really want to have in your life. I really hope that you found this useful and inspiring. I have some big outlandish goals for the business. I also have.... is it a big outlandish girl? I think it's, yeah, it's a medium sized goal. I have a goal setting up a circus club in my home village. It's gonna be like for ground skills, juggling, poi Diablo, all that sort of fun stuff. It's not gonna be for children. Adults need more play in their life too.

It's gonna be for adults. It's not gonna be for people who are necessarily good at it. Um, I'm really excited. It's my big personal project for 2026. I'm putting it out there so that I definitely stick to it. Thank you all so much for listening. If you are listening on [00:24:00] YouTube, I'd like to point out that yes, it is Christmas and there is a box that looks like it's got mulled wine in it behind me.

It's actually hiding Christmas presents. I was halfway through recording when I noticed it was there, so I was trying to stay in front of it all the way through. You know what? If you haven't checked out my YouTube, then you might wanna see the efforts I was taking to stay in front of and therefore blocking the cardboard box. If you listen on podcasts, this makes no sense whatsoever, but go with it. It's all good. Maybe you should check out my YouTube. In fact, there's gonna be more YouTubes, special ones coming in the new year too, so make sure that you do go follow me over there. Anyway, thank you all so much for listening, and I will see you next week.