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What you’ll learn in this episode:
As we move toward the end of the year, many entrepreneurs start thinking about goal setting—yet most approach it from the wrong mindset. In this episode, I break down the real foundation required before you set a single goal, deadline, or metric.
If you’ve felt overwhelmed, stuck, overworked, or like your goals never quite reflect what you actually want, this episode will help you clear the mental clutter so you can plan from clarity, confidence, and expansion, not pressure or fear.
During this episode, you’ll learn:
- Why your current mindset may be quietly sabotaging your goals (even if your strategy is solid).
- The four “mind trash” patterns that show up when your thinking is out of alignment—and how to spot them fast.
- A simple awareness question that interrupts overwhelm, overworking, and overindulging in real time.
- The identity shift required to create next-level results (and how to tap into it before you start planning).
- How to structure your environment, support, and schedule so the future you becomes your default way of operating.
💬 Loved this episode? Let’s keep the conversation going—DM me on Instagram (@jessicadioguardimiller) and tell me your biggest takeaway!
Mentioned in this episode:
Work/Connect with me:
Jessica Miller (00:00.888)
Hello everyone and welcome back to this week’s episode of the It’s Your Offer podcast. I am coming in hot today as my eight-year-old son would say, I’m coming in hot with a little bit of a PSA for all of you around something that’s been coming up a lot. I’m gonna sort of talk off the cuff today, a little bit off script because this has been so top of mind for me, for my clients, for this time of the year that I felt compelled this morning to come on the mic and talk about this today right now.
You’re getting like the true Jess Miller, know, not a lot of scripting, not that I really script my podcast that much anyway, but you’re getting sort of the real essential perspective from my own experience, from what my clients are experiencing and from what I have just seen in the marketplace and heard from other people around. So, what I want to talk about in today’s podcast is this idea of goal setting because we’re toward the end of the year and this is what
people either are already thinking about, they’re starting to think about, I’m a big fan of like the best time you should start planning your, you know, Q1 goals was yesterday. So, if you’re just coming into this, you’re not late, but now is a great time to start. I want to talk to you about goal setting, but from a different angle that I think you’re probably going to hear on just about any other podcast that you might be listening to, especially if it’s related to growth strategies or tactical things that grow your business, you probably aren’t going to hear about goal setting from this angle.
But I’m gonna sort of stand on the rooftop here and tell you that this topic that I’m about to talk about is such an integral part of the foundation that you build before you actually get into the tactical goal setting piece. And that if you don’t do it, I promise you that what you create will be vastly different than what you create if you set this foundational piece to your goal setting planning first.
And this piece that I want to talk to you about, I affectionately refer to as mind trash. It is what is going on in your head as you prepare to go into the process of setting your goals, thinking about your future Q1, looking at the things that you would like to do and the results you would like to create in that timeframe and how what you’re thinking links to those things.
Jessica Miller (02:28.396)
And one of the most dangerous things about the thoughts that come up in your head are number one, they are on autopilot a lot of times. Many of us don’t even know what we’re thinking and what is coming up. Number two, they’re often very negative and they’re not serving you. And number three is those thoughts and that attitude is driving your goal setting bus.
And if it is not on point to where you want to go, it is not going to be in service of you creating the results you really want with your goals. And therefore, the whole process is actually built on something that is leading you in a direction to create things you ultimately don’t want to create or to make it harder for you to create the things that you want to create because the energy and the directional movement of
your attitude and your thoughts are not making it easy to get to where you want to go. They’re not pointed in the direction of the thing that you really want. They’re actually in a different direction and it’s causing drag on your productivity. So, when we think about mind trash and when we think about this underlying mental space that we are in when we create our goals, that mental space needs to be on point for the person
and the business that you ultimately wanna run. And so, if we think about goal setting from the perspective of Q1, 2026, or even if you’re doing like yearly planning, we’re thinking about the thoughts and the mindset and the space in between our ears that is occupied by someone who has an identity of the person who has achieved the goals that you want. What unfortunately happens a lot of times is that we,
think about our future goals and the things we want from the headspace that we are in right now. And the headspace we are in right now is the headspace that got you to where you are today in this present moment. It has created the results you have now. It has created the way you feel right now. It’s created the actions that you take right now. If you look into your world where you’re sitting, everything that you have created are from your current state of mind.
Jessica Miller (04:49.4)
So, if you want to be in a different place, you have to have a different set of mind, a different identity, a different vantage point in order to create those things. Because if you think the same things, you create the same things, the results you will produce are the same. If we want to grow, we have to step into a different mindset, a different mind field in order to make that happen. So, what I see for many of my clients when they’re in a place where
they’re not able to achieve these goals or they’re having anxiety over setting these goals or it just doesn’t seem like worth it to set these goals. They’re often in a place of this mind trash that I see surfacing over and over and over again. And I will tell you the top, have like four things that I see. I’ve seen it for myself, I see it in my clients. I see people doing that kind of perpetuate this mind trash. This is how they tell that they are in
at where the mind trash is like running the show. Okay, number one, they start to over effort. They start to over effort. Number two, they start to over work. Number three, maybe they overeat or over indulge. Number four, they overspend. Okay, these are the four places that I see it. And when I see my clients showing up, they’re not necessarily showing up with that awareness that like, man, I’m really over efforting.
But these four areas are where they are spinning in their world and where that mind trash is really causing a problem. If we connect the dots to this, if they are in that head space and then they try to create goals from there, can you imagine what that’s gonna look like? It’s probably going to look like a plan that incorporates that kind of behavior and that kind of mindset.
into whatever it is they are going to do to get to the next result that they want. And we do not want that, we don’t want to be starting from that place. So, I’m gonna break these down, what each one of these things mean and what I often see as the symptoms that show up around these things. So, number one, over-efforting. When somebody starts to over-effort, they get into this place of lack mentally, where they think that the more
Jessica Miller (07:15.498)
Energy they put behind something the more effort they put into something whether it’s like their clients their Presentation they’re putting together the networking group that they’re going in that they’re supposed to show up in once a month They start to get into this place where they think they need to overcome some Issue in that they think that they have something some hurdle with more effort like if I just do more if I just You know do this a little bit harder
If I put more effort in, it’s actually going to be better and more valuable. I’m gonna get the results I want by doing more, putting in more effort. Why this doesn’t work is because all effort is not created equal. Everything you do doesn’t create the results you want. There are specific things that are linked to the results you want, the results that you help your clients get, that are integral for creating that result. And doing more things
in general, is not going to necessarily be the answer of creating the value you want. It is actually about putting effort into the things that you know are gonna move the needle and really being able to get clear on what those are. And even the things that you put on your goal plan, for example, its knowing what things are gonna move the needle and putting your effort toward that and having it be laser focused versus fracturing it all over the place. So, you’re doing a lot of things, many of which don’t actually move the needle.
and it just burns you out, right? All this energy is scattered and you can’t give a lot of it to any one thing. And you’re often giving it to things that actually don’t matter. Okay, so over-efforting, it shows up in that way in your business. The second thing is overworking. Overworking, what I see is when people think that they, them, being interlaced with everything in their business,
or everything going on in their world is actually going to move the needle more. It’s when there’s a million things on your calendar, there’s no white space, every project you’re involved with, you’re staying up till 12 o’clock at night, redoing the Canva fonts in the thing when your administrative assistant or your graphic designer could do that. It’s the belief that you being involved is actually going to be more valuable. And this comes from a place when we think that
Jessica Miller (09:40.204)
there’s something maybe wrong with what we’re doing or something wrong with what other people are doing and we have to get ourselves in there more in order to make the things work. When we think about goal setting, this is where we give ourselves like 75 goals or there’s like 20 work streams under each one of our goals, all of which we are responsible for. It’s the holding on and being the bottleneck that is the problem. It shows up in that way. And overworking not only leads to burnout, but it leads to
lack of productivity and subpar results because we are not good at everything and we can’t be in everything. And when we are, because our brain tells us that it’s just better when we’re in it, it’s when we really start to slow everything down with our growth and our goals actually become suboptimal because we’re focused on the things that in our brain, we think we can do and we think we can do better and often those things are misguided. So, we leave like.
all of this money and all this opportunity on the table, because we’re setting goals from this place of like, I need to be involved in it, I’m better than anybody else at it. You know, the buck stops with me kind of a thing. When many of us know in order to grow, right, it’s not about like, how are we going to do all of it? It’s who is going to help us do this, right? So, the overworking piece shows up in that place. And often it looks like a jammed calendar. So that’s, that’s really where it shows up. The third piece is like overeating or overindulging.
We get into this place where as biologically, a human being, as a human being biologically, when we start to get overwhelmed, we end up creating anxiety in our body. And biologically, when we are in that place, we are looking for ways to break that feeling, break that cycle, break that anxiety. What we end up doing in that time period, when we’re in that space,
is we end up looking for distractions, right? We want to deflect this energy. Our body is feeling the discomfort and it’s wanting to save us. So, in order to do that, we find something else to be distracted in. For many of us, it could be a variety of different things. It could be like we start scrolling Facebook, we start, you know, going and organizing our desk. We go to the fridge and get a snack. We, you know, call our friend.
Jessica Miller (12:02.922)
it could be a million different things and everybody has like their own drug of choice, but we start over distracting ourselves essentially to get out of this friction and this pain that we are feeling when we are in this mind trash, when our brain is telling us all the things that we’re not doing right now, we’re not gonna do right in the future, like there’s all of this friction, we start to over, over indulge, over distract. And that could look like, like I said, you know, doing
That random thing that you don’t need to do right now, could be drinking, it could be eating, it could be any of the things. But what it’s doing is it’s trying to relieve the tension in our body that we’re feeling. It’s actually a mechanism that is actually there for good. But when we are not aware of it and we are just on autopilot around it and all that mind trash is going on repeat, it pushes us into these areas where we end up sucking up all of our time and all of our energy because we’re in this distraction.
And it’s a nightmare. And it makes us feel like we’re always behind the eight ball and there’s a million things that we need to do and we need to go really big or go home. And we start to create goals from that place, which is not a centered, logical, know, not in the river of emotion place to set goals from. this like over indulging, know, over overdoing it is another hallmark sign of when mind trash is running the show here. And we want to
Intersect that and last but not least is overspending if you are an entrepreneur and many of the people listening to this podcast are That are successful you look at the revenue you’re bringing in and you’re like man. This is a lot of money I am doing well. I am succeeding but somehow you cannot hold on to that money It’s like every single time you make the money you find something to spend it on or something else comes up or just somehow magically
disappears from your account. This could be an area where that mind trash, that deservingness, that enoughness is running the ship in your brain and it is causing you to spend that money faster than you’re making it. And the reason that’s happening is because you feel like you need to fill a void. Like whatever you’re spending that money on is like the shiny object that’s gonna solve all of your problems and it’s gonna make you feel better. But here’s the thing, it doesn’t.
Jessica Miller (14:26.572)
And when we think about the things we want to do in the future around our goals or our growth from a place where we are overspending to numb the pain or numb the mind trash, we end up buying things for the wrong reasons. And that cycle either nets us out on a net-net zero, both financially, but also energetically, and also happiness-wise, where we’re either breaking even or we’re in the red. And again,
Creating from that space is just spinning in circles because you’re really not going anywhere and in some ways you’re going backwards. Okay, so that’s what over overspend looks like in your business. It’s, you know, getting the email from, you know, some somebody in your email box about some random thing you never thought about all of a sudden, oh my gosh, you need it you need to buy it. Or Susie said that they bought something and now you’re buying it even though it has nothing to do with your business and you weren’t thinking about it. It’s not an intentional thing.
That’s what it looks like in your business. So, some of the things that people show up as, like I said, when you’re in the space, you’re probably not sitting there thinking, man, I’m over-efforting or I’m overworking or man, I’m really overspending. mean, sometimes you are aware of those things, but often that’s not how it’s showing up in your life. It’s actually showing up in your life in these ways. You can’t sleep. You’re waking up in the middle of the night and your brain is spinning. Maybe you’re.
If you’re overeating or like over-adulterated, maybe you’re gaining weight or there’s something physically going on with you. You have a packed calendar, right? There’s no white space on that calendar. It’s just jammed. And if you’re somebody like me who like color codes things, my gosh, literally puts you over the edge when you open up your Google calendar or whatever you’re using. Sea of colors, right? There’s stress that just won’t go away. It’s this underlying like anxiety that you’re feeling all the time. It’s that like, you know, that feeling kind of like you’re buzzing.
Okay, you show up in that way. You do something, like I affectionately refer to this as revenge reading. So, what I mean by that is like, you start like pinching the things that are really important that are gonna actually make you feel better and keep you in a good head space. So, for example, you don’t go to sleep on time. If you’re like me, you’ll just like read and read and read till two o’clock in the morning. Doesn’t matter. It doesn’t matter if you’re tired. You’re just like, I’m revenge reading. This is my time. I don’t care. I deserve this. I’m gonna just keep reading this book.
Jessica Miller (16:49.548)
So, revenge reading, staying up, not exercising, not drinking your water. The things that you know that would be good for you and actually are the things that help put you in a grounded head space and keep that mind trashed to a minimum, you start to negate those things. And I tell them that’s the areas that get pinched. So those things start going away. Doom scrolling, compare and despair. I could go on and on. Is this resonating with anybody? These things show up.
not as a judgment, they show up as a way, as a hallmark sign to show you that this is not the path you want to be on. Good goal planning though and results and growth, they start inside of you. They start with where your head is at. They start with your beliefs. They start with who you think you are. They start with your identity.
Growth, yes, it is the tactics and the plan and the goals that you write down on paper. It absolutely is those things. But those things come from what you believe about you, about your ability to succeed, about what it takes and how hopeful you are that you can make it happen, whether the universe has your back. All of those things are where it starts. It’s the fodder for where things germinate. And if that…
fodder is mind trash. That is what’s growing from there. So, when we get into these places where, you know, we’re seeing our bank account drain, we’re not sleeping, we’re feeling stress, we’re like overeating, like we’re noticing these things, that is a sign that something needs to shift. And here’s the things that I want you to do in order to shift this mind trash into a mindset of true success and growth.
Because every single person listening to this podcast is that person whose mind is on point, who can create the things that they want, who is a total badass and can simplify their business and create powerful goals that are going to be the profit leavers in their business going forward. But the key is it has to start with this foundational piece and then you layer on the doing from the being that is in line with who you wanna be and the goals that you wanna create.
Jessica Miller (19:09.378)
This is the being part. And so, if you are in this place of mind trash, I see you. There is no judgment. I am there too. Every one of us is there sometimes. And we want to make sure that we’re intersecting that with this. So, we get you into a place where the things you’re going to create and the goals you’re going to set are actually created on a strong, powerful foundation that’s going to catapult you forward. It’s giving you that momentum, that spring.
that you need to go forward and then fly. That’s what we want, okay? And if you’re not in the mind trash place right now, totally great. This is still super important because every single one of us has a place to grow, right? There’s always those little micro tweaks we can make to make things even stronger and better. This is what we talk about here all the time. It’s about optimization. It’s about doing what you’re doing better, not breaking it apart and blowing it up and then.
starting over. mean, you could do that too, but I don’t think you need to because you’re doing a lot of great things. Let’s take those things and make sure they’re working for you and you’re in service of you. Okay, so what do you do right now to get this mind trash like back on track here into a powerful place of mindset, a powerful identity that allows you to build from there and set your goals from there. Okay, number one, here’s what I want you to do. When you get into these places and we know it when we were there, we feel it in our body.
Right, there is tension, there is fatigue. When you’re sitting at your desk or you’re going through your day, working on your business, working through it, I want you to be aware of how you’re feeling. And I want you, before you do anything, I want you to ask yourself, why are you doing this? Okay, so if you go, for example, you’ve got a client, they’re doing great, but you get this impulse.
that you just need to schedule another call with them, even though you’re only supposed to meet with them once a week, I want you to ask yourself, why are you doing this? Okay, why are you doing this? If you’re sitting at your desk and you’re supposed to be recording your podcast and you’re thinking about what you’re gonna say and you’re writing down your outline and you feel like it’s just not flowing, you know, quite the way that you want it to, and you get this urge to get up and go to the refrigerator and get a snack when you’re really not hungry, I want you to ask yourself, why are you doing this?
Jessica Miller (21:31.841)
One of the most powerful ways to intercept these thoughts and the actions and feelings that come after it is to ask yourself, why are you doing this? Why? And to give yourself an answer. Now, this is not about judgment of why you’re doing this. Sometimes you will decide, listen, this podcast outline is driving me absolutely nuts and I need to just get up right now and go get a snack. And that’s great.
But you wanna make sure that when you ask yourself why and you give yourself an answer, that you like the reason. You like the reason. If right now you need a break and you’re just gonna go get a snack because you can’t deal with the outline, and that’s logical and it makes sense to you, and you like it, amazing, that’s what you’re gonna do. But if you find that you’ve got 30 minutes to write your podcast outline, and what you really need to do is just be writing it and…
Maybe the approach you’re using is not really working and you’re thinking about you every time you’re getting up to get us You know snack and you’re never getting it done and you ask yourself Why and you’re like it’s because I hate doing this and it feels terrible, you know But I’m gonna go get the snack and you don’t like that reason then the question becomes what do I want to do instead and That is number two. So first it’s like why am I doing this? What is the answer and you can’t say I don’t know?
I mean you could say I don’t know, but then my question is do you really want to be going through your day not knowing? But everybody knows. What is the answer and do you like the reason? Okay, if the answer is no, then you go to number two. And that is, what do you want to be doing? So, if you are doing the things you don’t want to be doing, like booking that call with that client because you think that you need to, but in reality, you don’t want to be bogging your
calendar down with a whole another call and they may or may not actually even need it so you don’t like that reason but you feel like you’d like to and maybe they could use just another touch point how do you do that without doing the thing you don’t want to be doing so without giving them an hour of your time from this place of lack when they maybe don’t even need it and there may not even be a problem but there’s an intuitive hit that maybe they do need something or you would like to give them something
Jessica Miller (23:51.289)
How do you do that without sacrificing the entire hour? And what would you do instead? So that’s the next question is what do you want to be doing? Where are you seeing this mind trash and these things show up in your life? And where do you want to be doing it differently? Okay, same thing with the podcast, right? Maybe you’re finding that you’re getting up to go get a snack and not only do you not want to be breaking the flow because you need to get this done in 30 minutes, but you also don’t want to be eating snacks when you’re not really hungry.
Then the question is like, what else can I do to make this process more enjoyable so I don’t feel so much angst with it and I can actually get it done in 30 minutes? And maybe that’s giving yourself a pass and a green light to change the way you’re doing it. Maybe it’s working for a certain amount of time and then taking a little break to just take a breath and ease that tension and get up. Maybe it’s doing something a little different. Like maybe you, you know.
write the podcast with a friend and you’re brainstorming. You know what I mean? There’s so many ways, but thinking about what do I want to be doing instead? Okay. And be a super sleuth in your life. I am telling you; you are going to be shocked at where this shows up for you. Okay. I actually did this exercise myself and I’ve had my clients do it. And my goodness. Like I remember the first time I actually was noticing I was checking my phone a lot for like no reason.
So, I shut the phone off. I was like, okay, for the next hour, I’m gonna do this project and I’m shutting that phone off. And the amount of times the impulse came for me to go pick the phone up when number one, it was off. Number two, I had absolutely no reason to actually pick that phone up was astonishing. It was astonishing. And I was like, this is not what I wanna be doing. And it changed everything for me. There’s times where I check my phone. There’s time blocks where I do certain things. Like I started to realize
how much I wasn’t getting done because I was fracturing my focus, it just, my goodness, complete game changer. And it changed the way that I thought about the things I was gonna do in the future. So, the goals that I set, how I was gonna do that, how long those things were gonna take, completely changed. Okay, the third thing is once you’re onto yourself, number one, and number two, you figure out what you actually wanna be doing, then the third thing is intentionally making a structure.
Jessica Miller (26:16.834)
for that to happen. So intentionally writing down and having somewhere who you want to be. Because that is what this is. When you make a change in your behavior, what ends up catching up to those changes in behavior is this identity of now believing and knowing that you are now this new person. And in order to do that and do that easily and well, having a blueprint is really powerful. Like these are the things I’m doing. These are the…
that I don’t wanna be doing or that I wanna change. These are the things I wanna be doing. And it looks like this. When you write that down and you’re like, these are the things that are the most important that I actually wanna shift, they’re gonna have the biggest impact on my life and everything I create going forward from there. And this piece of paper is actually a blueprint of what the person I want to be and how they’re showing up in the world is actually like being. That is so huge. is, you literally be able to see it.
And then it’s easier to manage yourself to that blueprint. Because very quickly you can see like, I being this person or not? And what you wanna do is create a habit around that. A belief and a habit around being that person so that then it just becomes who you are. And that is how you jump to your next level identity. The last piece of this that I would say number four that’s really important is if you can systematize and also
Control your environment to the extent that it supports this new person. That is the killer combination Okay, it’s like we’ve identified where we’re showing up in the mind track and the way we don’t want to be We’ve identified what we want to be doing We’ve put it on paper and created this blueprint of who we really are and we want to be showing up as this person and we want to do that on autopilot. We want to become this person
And then if you show up in the spaces and the places with the people who are going to help support this new identity of yours, they’re playing on that level. They’re showing up in this way. They’re cheering you on. They’re being real about how some days they’re not always on point. When you go into those rooms and those places, everything gels together because we rise right to the level of the energy and the vibes and the goals in our life that are in alignment with who we want to be and how we are showing up.
Jessica Miller (28:39.618)
So, if you hang around with a lot of low vibe, sort of like sad sack people, that is how you’re gonna show up. Those are the things that are acceptable, right? All that energy is shared amongst people. But when you step into a space that supports who you wanna become, everything shifts. And what ends up happening in those spaces is that when you go into this next piece, where you’re now intentionally thinking about the actions and the doing and the things that are going to help create and perpetuate
the business and the life you want, you create from that space in a totally different way. Because your mind is in a different way, your identity is in a different way, the people around you and the energy, the resources you have to others and to opportunities that are on that level, they’re up at that vibe that you wanna be on, just completely change your life and your business. And what I want you to do is I want you to be in that space. Before you write one goal,
Before you go into the tactical doing of goal setting, you need to get in the room as the person you wanna be with clarity and momentum in order to create it. Now, I’m not saying that if you’re not there, you’re not gonna create goals that are good. You are, because it’s just who you are and you’re awesome. But if you wanna blow your own damn mind, follow this process. Set the stage to get the mind trash to the side
and to step into the mindset, you need in order to build goals that are gonna blow your mind and blow the mind of everybody around you. Because who we are being drives how we are feeling and what we are doing. And what we are doing then drives the results we create in our life. But it all starts from how you think about yourself and who’s driving the bus mentally. And mind trash and goal setting is the
fastest way to slow your business down and create goals that are actually not gonna be your breakthrough, right? They’re not gonna be the stretch thing. They’re not gonna be driven by momentum and hope and belief. They’re gonna be driven by limiting beliefs and the emotion of stuckness where you don’t wanna be. And again, there is no judgment in this. We are all in this place sometimes. Even when we feel like we’re firing on all cylinders,
Jessica Miller (31:05.496)
There’s always like the next level, right? But we wanna stay in the place where the foundation we have built is in service to the things that we really want. It’s in service to the people we wanna be. It’s in service to the business we wanna build. It’s in service to the goals and to the results that we are creating. It’s not in service to results that we don’t want. And when we’re in the mind trash, when we’re doing that on autopilot and we’re not aware, that’s what happens. So.
Take the time, go back and listen to this podcast again, write these things down and go through each one of them and feel it in your body. This is an emotional experience. Feel it. And when you feel that expansive, what I call shackles off feeling, you know you are on the fast track to amazing goals and to the business and the life you wanna create. And every single person listening to this podcast is capable of that.
You got this; you are amazing. So do these things and watch your goal setting for the end of this quarter and next year. Totally blow your damn mind. Until next week, everyone, have an amazing week.
