54: {Interview} The Importance of Goal Setting and Accountability with Jen Laffin

Are you setting and achieving goals in your life? This could be a professional goal or a personal one. We've all been there... new year, new goals. But are you really holding yourself accountable and moving the needle every single day to work towards making it happen?

In today's episode, I sit down with goal setting and accountability coach, Jen Laffin. 
Jen explains that setting goals is essential for personal and professional growth and encourages you to doubt your doubts and overcome your fears. She also shares strategies for dealing with doubt and imposter syndrome, emphasizing the need to recognize and acknowledge these feelings while not letting them control decision-making.

Takeaways Include:

• Setting goals is crucial for personal and professional growth.
• Doubting your doubts and overcoming fear is essential for achieving goals.
• Developing grit and perseverance is key to overcoming doubt and achieving success.
• Effective goal-setting involves having a long-term vision and breaking it down into smaller, actionable steps.
• Giving yourself grace and avoiding perfectionism is important when facing setbacks or challenges.

Jen Laffin is a Success Mentor who has spent the last 15+ years helping goal-setters become goal-getters. She teaches you how to doubt your doubt so that you can move out of your Comfort Cave toward new growth with greater ease and less stress. She specializes in supporting those who struggle with procrastination, perfectionism, and imposter syndrome to develop self-accountability without angst. Jen is the host of The Flight School Podcast and founder of the Goal Getters Club.

More on Jen HERE and you can connect with her on LinkedIn HERE

Check out her podcast HERE and Goal Getter's Club

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Transcript

Caroline (00:01.697)
Today I have a Jen LeFene with me. Jen is the founder of Jen LeFene Coaching. She's a LinkedIn top voice in coaching and mentoring, a keynote speaker and host of the Flight Podcast, the Flight School Podcast. So welcome Jen.

Jen Laffin (00:16.207)
Good. Hello, Caroline. How are you? It's good to be here.

Caroline (00:21.825)
So I'd love to hear your story. You're an expert in the goal setting and accountability space. So how did you get into the personal and professional development space in general?

Jen Laffin (00:33.39)
That's a really great question. I used to be a teacher. I spent nine years in the education world where I worked with students, helping them reach their goals. And as I transitioned out of that into entrepreneurship, I really saw a need for some solid goal work and accountability.

Because a lot of us don't have that accountability partner or person in our life who's checking in on them, especially if you're in business for yourself. That's, that's kind of where I started is working with solopreneurs and that has expanded. And now I work with people, anybody who wants to set a goal and become a goal getter. And usually those are bigger goals, but sometimes they're maybe a little bit smaller goal and building the habits and the routines.

to become someone who reaches the goals that they set.

Caroline (01:33.025)
Why is it important for people to set goals and hold themselves accountable?

Jen Laffin (01:38.946)
Why is it important? Well, because if we're not setting goals for ourselves, we're not evolving. We weren't put here on this earth to just exist. And I'm here to show people that those dreams and those goals that are hidden deep inside of them are given to them for a reason. And that means that they also have an obligation to try to bring those things to life. Unfortunately,

We've been conditioned by our education or maybe our families or our upbringing, our society. We've been conditioned to think that impossible goals are unreachable. And I'm here to show people that anything is possible as long as they're willing to put in the work and overcome their doubt. One of the things that I talk a lot about is learning how to doubt your doubt because that's a

necessary component for reaching your goals and doing big things. And I just want to see everybody live their very best lives by accomplishing the things that they want to accomplish in this lifetime. We only get one go around. So let's make it great.

Caroline (02:53.409)
You just mentioned doubting their doubt. So are there any strategies or exercises that people can be doing when that doubt rises its ugly head in our brains?

Jen Laffin (02:56.311)
Hmm.

Jen Laffin (03:06.646)
Oh, absolutely. First of all, if you I want to go in a little bit about and explain a little bit about the concept of the comfort cave, which is something else that I talk about. And many people don't know, but scientists have studied the evolution of the brain over time. And what they have found is that our brains today still carry some of the traits that our prehistoric ancestors had. And that as the

brain evolved, it held on to certain things. And part of that is we have a part in our brain that is often referred to as the caveman brain, the reptilian brain, or the primal brain, which is the name that I call it. And what this part of our brain wants us to do is it wants us to stay safe, alive, and lazy. And so I have coined the phrase comfort cave as a way of signifying that

That part of our brain wants us to stay in our comfort cave doing what is most comfortable for us. And that means not growing. So when we set goals for ourselves and we think about leaving our comfort cave to achieve them, the primal brain starts getting really nervous because remember, its purpose is to keep us safe, alive, and lazy. And the way that it does this is by sending us doubt and sending us

urges to procrastinate and to be perfectionists and it sends us imposter syndrome. So when we are doing something hard and we notice that our doubt starts to get really loud, we do one of two things. We either stop what we're doing and make that mean that we're doing something wrong and go right back to our comfort cave where everything feels safe for us because it's known, or we can learn how to doubt our doubt and keep moving forward.

So one of the things that I've learned is that I just try to raise awareness around the thoughts that I'm thinking as I'm doing hard things or as my clients are doing hard things. I encourage them to also raise their awareness around their thoughts. And when you notice doubt getting loud, maybe it's telling you things like, this is never going to work. Or who do you think you are to be doing something like this?

Jen Laffin (05:34.506)
you're going to fail or you know, you always give up on yourself. Why don't you just stop now and go back to stop moving forward? I've learned to recognize that when I hear those things, it's actually a good thing. And what I mean by that is when you're hearing your doubt, you know you're leaving your comfort cave. That is your direction to growth. As long as you understand that it's always going to be there. And it doesn't mean you're doing anything wrong.

You can let it coexist with you. But it's really important that you do not let your doubt call the shots for you. The doubt doesn't get to make any decisions. And that's really important because a lot of people let doubt decide for them and then they never reach their goals.

Caroline (06:23.841)
Does doubt ever go away?

Jen Laffin (06:27.318)
You know, I would say no, it doesn't ever go away. You just get better at handling it. And so it gets a little bit quieter. In the book, Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert, she talks about, she has a section in the book on taking a road trip with fear. And how she describes it is she tells fear that she knows that anytime she's going to be doing something creative, fear always shows up.

And that's kind of her phrase for doubt. So fear always shows up. It's always going to be a part of things. And so she describes this road trip and she tells fear, I know you're going to want to come along because you always do. And I know that I have to let you because it's a part of growing. But here are the rules. You have to sit in the back seat. You don't get to look at the map. You don't get to drive the car. You don't even get to touch the radio.

but I'm going to let you come along because I know I have to let you come along. And I think the sooner we recognize that fear and doubt are a part of our growth journey, the easier it's going to be for us. Because like I said before, we have a tendency to make doubt mean something terrible. And really all that it is, it's that primal brain saying,

Oh my goodness, you're heading into unknown territory. I need to protect you safe, alive and lazy. Get back here to the comfort cave. And the more you give into the doubt, the more that primal brain knows what works for you. And so it's going to keep doing it and doing it and doing it, but you can be smarter about it and you can call it for what it is and say, it's okay. I know that you're nervous. I know that you're afraid of what we're doing here, but it's all right. You can come along. You can be right here with me.

But I'm making the decisions.

Caroline (08:25.869)
Did you deal with any of that? I mean, you made a pretty big pivot from being a teacher to a coach, and those are still teaching others skills, but that meant you went on your own. You took the entrepreneurial journey. You ramped up the content. You've got the podcast. How did you kind of overcome some of that imposter syndrome and doubt yourself?

Jen Laffin (08:49.154)
You know, that's a really great question. I left education seven years ago. So I've been an entrepreneur for seven years. This is actually my seventh business. And I am very, very open that I experienced a ton of doubt. Anybody who does anything that is a major pivot for them always has doubt, always, even if they don't look.

look like it, that's really important. I would just say I had a lot of support when I started my business, as far as I surrounded myself with people who were already in places where I wanted to go. And I learned that I could study their roadmaps as for how they did things as a way that I could consider doing it. And that was...

really, really helpful. And plus I just refused to give up. There were many times that I thought about giving up, but I just refused to give up.

Caroline (09:59.085)
So that to me means you have to have a lot of grit and a lot of chops. And I feel like you have to overcome the doubt to even get to the grit and the chops part. Would you disagree?

Jen Laffin (10:04.031)
and

Jen Laffin (10:12.546)
think they're all kind of mixed in together. I do remember when I first left teaching, one of the very first books I read was Angela Duckworth's book on grit. And that was eye opening for me. And that's the other thing that I did too, is I kept learning, I kept my mindset in a place that taught me what I needed to learn to be able to continue. And I think

The reason that so many new businesses fail is that people don't get support, but also they don't learn that role that doubt and fear can play in our lives. And they again, make it mean something that it doesn't have to mean. And they end up quitting on their goals or quitting on their business and going back to working for somebody else.

Caroline (11:09.217)
So switching back to goal setting, do you suggest from a strategy standpoint that people set goals daily, weekly, monthly, or yearly? What have you seen set someone up for success?

Jen Laffin (11:23.018)
I would say it varies by the individual because I like to have a long-term plan, but you need to have those little steps in between to help get yourself there. It's not just like a light switch that you flip on, and then all of a sudden you've met your goal. So I want you to have a long-term vision for yourself and for your life or for your business, but I want you then to backwards.

called backwards design, where you start with the end in mind and you work backwards, like what needs to happen here, and here in order to be able to get to there. And so one of the things I do is when I set my yearly goals is I backwards design by quarters. So I say quarter one, here's what I need to do, quarter two, here's what I want to do, quarter three, and then by quarter four, I will have finished the goal. Cause I think that's something too is

people underestimate how long it takes to meet a goal, especially big goals. And they get frustrated when they are in the middle of their journey and they don't have that momentum and enthusiasm from the beginning of their goal journey. And the end is still so far away, they get stuck in what's called the messy middle and they end up giving up because they haven't.

scaffolded in support for themselves to get them through that time faster. So, celebrating the journey, but also looking for those little winds along the way, I think is really important.

Caroline (12:58.933)
leads me to the next question is what if you set goals that say weekly or monthly and you meet part of them or half of them I mean how can you move forward from that from a mindset shift to keep going?

Jen Laffin (13:14.678)
That's something that I call giving ourselves grace. And it's definitely a part of the work that I do with my clients is if it doesn't go as planned, what are you going to make it mean? Because you have incredible power to decide for yourself what you want to make it mean. Did you put your best effort in? If you did, then keep going. If you didn't, maybe you need to make some adjustments. I am a huge.

advocate of removing shame and blame and guilt and negative self-talk and all the bad feelings that can come the way we beat ourselves up when we don't meet our goals. That doesn't help anybody. It doesn't help you. It doesn't help future you. It doesn't help your goals. You cannot shame your way to success. And so giving yourself the grace and looking at it as data and looking for the

Sometimes people find that they set a goal that was too big or a timeline that was too small. And that kind of sabotaged them. So it's just being very gentle with yourself. If you know you didn't show up like you wanted to, if you took more days off than you had days on, you can look at that and be like, okay, well, I can see what I did. Now I'm gonna try again and do something different. And that's to me is how you get to be successful.

Caroline (14:43.485)
Is there a magic number to reworking the strategy or the actions in place? Before you figure out it's time to throw the tile in and give up.

Jen Laffin (14:53.55)
No, I don't think there's a magic number. I think it, again, it's very individual. Sometimes you can just do one recalculation and you're there and other times you have to keep recalculating. Because the other thing is too, sometimes when we start out working on our goals.

we don't have a very clear destination of where we want to end up. And so that kind of will take us on a much curvier route to get to somewhere, because we're not quite sure where we're headed. Okay. So making sure that you are super clear on what your endpoint looks like is so helpful in the goal getting journey.

Another thing that I see a lot is people have an idea of where they want to go. They're very clear on it, they don't know how to get there. And so they tell themselves they can't begin until they've figured the whole route out. And to me, that is procrastination, it is probably some perfectionism, okay, that you want to do it right. What I like to tell people is

You just

Caroline (16:40.493)
Perfectionism is a huge one and I know you and I have gone back and forth on LinkedIn with our posts and comments about, I mean I think perfectionism is boring but some people have the desire and need to achieve it before even starting and I can see how that could be a huge roadblock.

Jen Laffin (16:56.542)
It is deeply, deeply rooted, deeply rooted for a lot of people. And that's why it's important that you give yourself grace and you kind of look at it with curiosity, like you look at your whole journey with curiosity, I think really, really helps.

Caroline (17:14.677)
So as we wrap up, how can our listeners find you?

Jen Laffin (17:17.878)
I would love to connect with anyone on LinkedIn. That's where you find me. Um, I also have on my website, which is www.genlophene.com. And I think I will, you said you could put that into the show notes. I also have a podcast called the flight school podcast where I share little tidbits, usually in under 10 minutes about how to fly to your greatest potential. So I would love to connect with your listeners there.

Caroline (17:45.409)
Thanks, Jen.

Jen Laffin (17:46.646)
You're welcome. Thank you so much, Caroline.