April 22, 2025 • 23 mins
Feel like your goals ghosted you this year?
You're not alone—and it's not self-sabotage.
In this episode, we’re talking to self-trust coach Dawn Ledet about why missed goals aren't failures, how to stop making your inner dialogue sound like a mean girl, and what to do when your ambition outpaces your execution.
Whether you’re a solopreneur navigating your next big move or just trying to stop rage-scrolling instead of working, this conversation is your permission slip to ditch the guilt and actually work with yourself—not against you.
Let’s rethink the whole “new year, new me” thing… and make some real progress instead.
🎙 Tune in, subscribe, and get ready to be inspired! Oh, and don’t forget to leave us that five-star review :)
Being a solopreneur is awesome but it’s not easy. It's hard to get noticed. Most business advice is for bigger companies, and you're all alone...until now. LifeStarr's SoloSuite Intro gives you free education, community, and tools to build a thriving one-person business. So, if you are lacking direction, having a hard time generating leads, or are having trouble keeping up with everything you have to do, or even just lonely running a company of one, be sure to check out LifeStarr Intro!
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Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Carly Ries (00:00):
Hey, listeners. Today, we sit down with self
(00:02):
trust coach, Dawn Ledet, touncover why missed goals aren't
self sabotage, and why yournegative self talk might be the
sneakiest thing holding youback. From turning inner critics
into curious companions, toplanning audacious goals that
actually fit in your life, thisconversation will have you
rethinking everything youthought you knew about follow
through. So grab your coffee,reopen that dusty goal list of
(00:25):
yours, and tune in because it'snot too late to get back on
track. You're listening to theAspiring Solopreneur, the
podcast for those just taking abold step or even just thinking
about taking that step into theworld of solo entrepreneurship.
My name is Carly Ries and mycohost Joe Rando and I are your
guides navigating this crazy butawesome journey as a company of
(00:47):
one. We take pride in being partof LifeStarr, a digital hub
dedicated to all aspects ofsolopreneurship that has
empowered and educated countlesssolopreneurs looking to build a
business that resonates withtheir life's ambitions. We help
people work to live, not live towork. And if you're looking for
a get rich quick scheme, this isnot the show for you. So if
(01:08):
you're eager to gain valuableinsights from industry experts
on running a business the rightway the first time around or
want to learn from the misstepsof solopreneurs who paved the
way before you, then stickaround.
We've got your back becauseflying solo in business doesn't
mean you're alone. Okay. SoDawn, at the time of this
recording, it is March and allof those New Year's goals that
(01:31):
everybody was so excited aboutare now either coming true or
they are long since attempted.Or all gone by the wayside. And
you are just so great at goalsetting, goal achievement that's
like kinda your shtick.
We always advise people to dogoal setting as like the first
(01:54):
thing they do when they whenthey start their business. So
now that we've hit that point ofthe year, and people might need
some encouragement, why aren'tmissed goals a self sabotage
problem? Like let's get to theroot of this and keep that
momentum going.
Dawn Ledet (02:10):
Absolutely. You know, the problem with labeling
missed goals, missedopportunities, delays in goals
as self sabotage is we miss outon valuable data in reaching our
goals. It's a reduction ofwhat's actually happening.
Right? And then it creates itsown big hurdle to overcome,
(02:34):
which makes it feel harder andmore uncomfortable. It becomes
this battle of you against youinstead of you and the real
obstacles and challenges thatcome with every goal and let's
say new endeavor. So what arethose like surprising things
that hold people back fromachieving their goals that they
(02:55):
may not be aware of? They justthink it's all my fault and they
don't see those blind spots.It's that we forget that
discomfort is normal. Itactually can be expected. We end
up When we think that discomfortis a problem, we end up fighting
(03:15):
against ourselves instead of forthe results we want.
Joe Rando (03:19):
You mean like you're fighting against the discomfort
or you're fighting basicallybeing angry at yourself for not
making the goals? I just wannaunderstand.
Dawn Ledet (03:29):
Absolutely. Because what happens is, I like to
remind, like, all our dedicatedfitness entrepreneurs out there,
that it's similar, to makingtime for your workouts. It's not
comfortable, but you do it forthe after effect benefits. Or
for our parents out there, it'sso hard, right? The teen years,
(03:53):
the rebellious moments, and thenwe bask in the rewards of first
steps and graduations andsuccesses.
When we normalize that hard ispart of it, that if things are
difficult and that we connect tothe times that we do do
difficult things for the netpositive results, we have a way
(04:17):
to work with ourselves insteadof against the discomfort.
Because when we make thediscomfort a problem, that's
when we reach for those go tocomforts, which often are things
like working on a task that'smore familiar, that's easier for
you, that, or stepping away andgoing to scroll social media or
(04:38):
answer emails. Because these arejust easier, take less effort
than addressing the discomfortat hand.
Carly Ries (04:45):
Those are the not important things, Joe, that we
always talk about.
Joe Rando (04:48):
Yeah. Not urgent, not important. But question, What
about the propensity of somepeople, I'm not talking about
myself by any stretch, to setgoals that are overly ambitious
and then run up against realityand feel badly about the fact
(05:10):
that, gee, I didn't achieve allthe goals I set out.
Dawn Ledet (05:13):
Right. I mean, I don't think there are goals that
are too ambitious, to be honest.I think our planning for how to
follow through with those goalsis what is understated. So we
make a plan that doesn't alignwith our lives, and then we beat
ourselves up for not achievingthose goals instead of making a
(05:36):
plan that actually aligns and isdoable. So the goal can be super
audacious.
Just make the plan.
Joe Rando (05:44):
The execution. Yeah. If do something huge, you don't
wanna try to do it in the nextmonth. You wanna maybe allow the
next year is what you're saying.
Dawn Ledet (05:54):
Absolutely. So the way we do success dates or goal
deadline dates, whatever termyou wanna use in the self trust
lab, we do it based on actuallylaying out what does it take to
achieve this goal. Let's look atall everything that it takes,
and let's plan it out. How muchtime do I wanna spend on this
(06:16):
each week, each day, eve eachmonth? And then that gives you
your deadline.
Joe Rando (06:21):
That's tough though sometimes. When you're doing
something you've never donebefore, and you go, oh, think
it's gonna be this, this, this.And then you do it, you go, oh
no, there were all these otherthings I never thought about.
Right?
Dawn Ledet (06:32):
Well, that's when the evaluation becomes so
important. We have to learn fromourselves along the way. Of
course, you're not gonna knowexactly how to do it because we
don't know what it takes to getsomething done until we've done
it. But if we're taking eachstep along the way and learning,
oh, hey, that step is gonna takethree more weeks. Let me adjust
(06:53):
for that.
Instead of using that energy tobeat ourselves up for not being
able to get it done, we canlearn from ourselves and create
an execution plan that actuallyworks.
Joe Rando (07:04):
That's really great.
Carly Ries (07:06):
I feel like you're dangling a carrot here. Can you
kind of go into your practicalframework that you help people
with? Because you're like, well,you evaluate, you set the goals
and what it takes. And I'm like,oh, I know there's more and I
want to know more.
Dawn Ledet (07:22):
Yes. Well, I believe truly that it only takes three
skills to achieve anything. Andit's make decisions, follow
through, and then have your ownback. And in that have your own
back piece is the evaluationprocess.
It's learning from what worked,what didn't work, and what we
(07:44):
can do differently to adjust ina way that works for us. And
when we can filter any strategythat you have, you can filter it
through those three skills andreally boil it down to simplify
it because we get caught up inall the noise and rhetoric of
everything that it takes insteadof tuning in and listening and
(08:09):
learning from what we're alreadydoing. There's so much wisdom
there. And when we don't mindthat wisdom, we don't mind that
data, then we often go into allthe self talk that Joe was
mentioning about like, why isn'tthis working? And this is, you
know, I'm terrible.
Carly Ries (08:26):
Well, so let's talk about that self talk for a
second. Because I'd imagine thatis 90% of goal setting is just
how you how you treat yourselfbasically. And if you're like,
oh, I'm so stupid. I can'tbelieve I do not think about
that in the plan. Do youremember maybe a decade ago that
little the video of that littlegirl that went viral that's
like, I love my mom.
(08:46):
I love my Jessica. Joe, I don'tknow if you ever saw that but
Joe Rando (08:50):
I saw it.
Carly Ries (08:50):
All these affirmations. And if only we
could all be like that in themorning because we're not. And
it's so much easier to nitpickthe things that we're doing
wrong than it is to do thethings that we are doing right.
So what is the connectionbetween self talk and goal
achievement?
Dawn Ledet (09:11):
Absolutely. Like any strategy can work truly, but you
have to have self trust toexecute it. And it starts with
our inner dialogue.
Our inner dialogue is sopowerful. And it contains so
much wisdom just waiting to beheard. And you hear that part
clearly when you're, you know,deciding on your goal, when you
(09:32):
are sure of what you want, whenyou are thinking about all the
ways that you wanna serve yourlife, your family, your clients.
But often what we're listeningto is what I call the lobby
noise. So if you think of a busylobby filled with voices of
other people, of experts, ofyour family and friends, of your
past, paired with your owndoubts and insecurities and
(09:55):
fears, we spend so much time inthat lobby and that's when we
start to feel overwhelmed andthat's when we start to create
confirmation bias for we havethoughts like, I suck and this
is too hard for me.
And then boy does our brain goto find evidence to support it.
(10:16):
And I love to remind people, andyou'll recognize this in
yourself if you think about it.You say something like that and
your brain immediately starts tobring up evidence from the past.
Remember when you didn't do thatone thing you said you were
gonna do? Remember when youdidn't follow that meal plan?
Remember when you didn't finishthat course? It just is so good.
Joe Rando (10:36):
don't know if this is a question or not, but I think
about people I've known, and youknow, growing up, my parents,
they were really great. I mean,they were really nice to me.
They made me feel good aboutmyself. I kind of didn't trust
them because of the rest of theworld that maybe they were,
exaggerating a little bit, whichthey absolutely were. But, I
(10:58):
kind of came up with this, youknow, pretty positive
surrounding, at least in termsof my family.
And I know people that grew upwith really awful messages being
given to them from birth. And Ifeel like what you're saying
makes total sense, but I justwanna point out that there are
some people that are gonnastruggle with this a lot more
(11:18):
than others to get rid of thoseI call them the tapes playing in
your head of the things thatmake you feel like you're not
competent or capable. And wannaI mean, I don't know. You may
have opinions on this. I justdon't wanna put it out there
like, hey.
You know, I just have to getover that. Some people are gonna
struggle. Some people gonna needtherapy to get to that point
where they can deal with that.
Dawn Ledet (11:38):
Sure. It's less about changing that. That is the
key piece of this. It's notabout affirmations and turning
every thought you have into apositive thought. I would not
recommend that at all, as amatter of fact.
But it is changing therelationship with those
thoughts. So understanding theorigin of them, that's what I
(11:59):
write about in the Master YourInner Dialogue, is we wanna
understand that we do have thesevoices, whether we created them
out of protection for ourselveswhen we were younger, whether
they were actual external voicesthat said words to us, how we
(12:19):
internalized them. And soidentifying the origin of them
creates a separation from them.They are voices. They are not
you.
And then you can start to createa dialogue with them so that
when you hear something like,what's wrong with me? You can
actually answer it with nothingis what I would hope you would
(12:45):
say. But I can tell you formyself, that one used to come up
for me a lot and I hear it a lotfrom my clients. What's wrong
with me? And sometimes you sayit so innocently, like kind of
jokingly like, oh, what's wrongwith me?
I dropped my phone. What's wrongwith me? But confirmation bias
is real. And when we don'tanswer that question, our brain
(13:05):
wants to prove us right. Itloves to prove us right.
And it goes to look forevidence. And when there's all
of that lobby noise giving youevidence, then we can live in
that space. But if we answer itlike my answer in the beginning
was just everything and nothingbecause it made me chuckle a
little bit. I thought it waskind of funny. I've realized
(13:27):
that that still had someconfirmation bias challenges
with it.
But so now I can cleanly saynothing. Like nothing's wrong
with me and I might bestruggling with something right
now. But that's the opening toactually connect to yourself
instead of disconnecting. Whatwe normally do when we
internalize those thoughts orquestions is we end up creating
(13:51):
more disconnect. We either wannaduck and run, or we want to
fight against them instead ofcreating more internal
connection and working withourselves.
Carly Ries (13:58):
So would you recommend that people kind of
practice this proactively andget that, like, even when
they're not struggling withsomething, they really like
rehearse that? Or when somethingcomes up, that's when they have
these inner discussions. Howwould you approach that?
Dawn Ledet (14:14):
Just beginning to see it as a dialogue is so
helpful. Don't try and rewriteyour story. Your story is your
story, there's so much beauty init. Even the difficult stories
have so much beauty. But here'swhat happens.
Our inner dialogue, we hear itin a tone. Right? So whether you
(14:34):
hear it in the tone of a judgeor a bully or a critic, our
inner dialogue actually doesn'thave a tone. It's one we give
it. And so my invitation is toneutralize that tone, is to
start catching thoughts andmaybe even just restating them
(14:55):
without any tone at all, or inthe tone of a child or in the
tone of a robot.
I have clients that use Britishaccents. Do something that takes
that sting out of it, the storythat it's carried for so long
and turn it into an actualconversation. So like if you
(15:17):
hear this will never work inthat tone of just like bully,
This will never work. You'relikely to either believe it or
push against it. And that'swhere our goals get paused or
delayed or even released.
But what if you heard that willnever work with no tone or maybe
(15:40):
in the tone of a child? You maylean in and get curious. And I
always invite you to take it asan invitation of two types.
First is an invitation to affirmyourself, your path, or your
goal, or second as an invitationfor a new perspective. So this
(16:01):
looks like, if you're seeing itas an invitation for, to affirm
yourself, your path, your goal,that will never work.
Could be like, and it totallycould. And it will. It's like,
oh yeah, this is just remindingme. If we think about, you know,
we actually pay people tochallenge our thoughts
sometimes. We're just being ableto do that for ourselves here a
(16:23):
little bit, but in aconstructive way.
So the second would be, youknow, that will never work. We
might wanna look at it and belike, okay, what is a way that
could work better? Maybe thereis something here that is not
aligning. Maybe there's somewisdom. If I walk through that
(16:44):
lobby into the door of my wisdomand intuition, maybe there
actually is something here thatI wanna reconsider before I keep
moving forward.
Carly Ries (16:53):
So you're saying like it doesn't have a tone, but
we assign it the tone. And mytone is subtle with mine because
it's self deprecation. And soinstead of saying, you're so
stupid, blah blah blah, it's oh,there's Carly biting off more
than she can chew again. Andthat I'll save that bit for
(17:16):
another time, I guess.
But that often to people doesn'tcome off as negative self talk
because they think it's, oh,well I'm being funny, it's not
true. But really it is stillnegative self talk in disguise.
How should people approach thatif they're kinda turning it into
(17:36):
a Yeah.
Dawn Ledet (17:38):
I mean it's just always being on to your
confirmation bias. There'snothing wrong with saying any of
these things, to be honest. It'sjust how is it supporting you in
moving forward? So if you'resaying something like, there's
Carly biting off more than shecan chew, true, have an answer
for that. Because you know itexists now.
You know that's something thatis part of your repertoire, part
(18:02):
of your self talk. And so if youhave an answer ready for it,
such as, turns out I can chew alot, or maybe here's something
that I wanna, pull off the platejust for today. Or maybe I wanna
rethink where this lands in myday, week, or monthly schedule.
Joe Rando (18:22):
Yeah. I really like this, and I wanna point out that
what I love about this is thatit's not Tony Robbins, like, get
up every morning and look in themirror. I'm great. I'm great.
And part of you is going, no.
No. I'm just lying to myself andusing a mirror and lots of
(18:43):
physical motion. And it's like,this is more this feels very
real to me. like it. It feelslike, yeah, I've gotta come to
terms with this thing.
I'm gonna give it a maybe whatdo you think about the idea? My
wife works with children withanxiety, and she gives the
anxiety a name. The kids give ita name. And, I mean, just give
(19:04):
whatever that thing is that'ssaying this to a name and deal
with it like you deal with anannoying coworker.
Dawn Ledet (19:13):
I'd love for it to get to a point where it's not an
annoying coworker. Becauseagain, we're not trying to
create more division. And that'smy other struggle with self
sabotage is we divide ourselvesinto these pieces. Like there's
pieces of us against us, as ifwe're not all for ourselves. And
what we really need is a unitedfront.
(19:35):
There's enough out there for usto battle. We need a united
front to move forward with it.And so we wanna become just
friends with our inner dialogue.We wanna connect to it. It's not
rainbows and daisies, so don'ttry and make it sound like
rainbows and daisies, but takecare of yourself through it.
When there's some discomfortthat wants to pull you away from
(19:56):
the task at hand, introducecomforts that actually support
forward movement. So it's justretraining those go to habits of
comfort into habits of comfortthat actually support forward
movement.
Carly Ries (20:11):
Dawn, I think the thing I love most about what you
do for people is that thisapplies to everybody.
I have never met a single personthat's like, I'm setting this
goal and I achieved it withease. I'm unless they set like,
I'm going out to get mynewspaper and then they grab
their newspaper. But like realgoals, this applies to every
single person, especiallysolopreneurs who would have that
(20:32):
whole who don't have their ideasdesolate to off of other people.
They are the person that theybounce those ideas off of.
Joe Rando (20:37):
That and the fact that they don't have a boss
going, get this done byThursday. You know, they have to
be that boss. So, yeah, I mean,this is kind of critical ways of
thinking about things for a lotof or maybe all solopreneurs,
which is, I think it soundsreally powerful to me.
Carly Ries (20:54):
Well, I want people to find out about more about
what you do, which we'll get toin a second. But before that,
you help people find successthrough self trust. So we have
to ask you, what is yourfavorite quote about success?
Dawn Ledet (21:07):
Oh, it probably won't surprise you since I am
the self trust coach, but myfavorite quote is self trust is
the first secret of success. Andthat's Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Carly Ries (21:18):
I was gonna say, like, did you write that? I've
heard he's pretty reputable, soI guess that's good one. Well,
Dawn, where can people find youif they wanna learn more?
Dawn Ledet (21:31):
If you are recognizing, that your inner
dialogue is impacting yourability to follow through and
trust yourself, I have a book,it's called Master Your Inner
Dialogue. It's the shortest readever, but it's a great guide for
shifting the way you talk toyourself so that you can create
that unified front towards allof your goals. So you can stop
(21:53):
second guessing and startfollowing through and create
more ease. Like you said, Carly,it's not gonna be easy. And so
that's why we have to normalizediscomfort, but we have to
create that united front towardsit so that we can achieve what
you want.
And look, I know that reading abook is just the beginning, so
I've created Beyond the Pages.It's an email series that
(22:16):
actually walks you through thebook with deeper insights and
actionable steps so that you canintegrate the concepts into your
daily life. And you can find itthe selftrustcoach.com.
Carly Ries (22:27):
Easy enough. That sounds great. Well, Dawn, thank
you so much for coming on theshow today. This has been so
helpful. And listeners, thankyou so much for tuning in.
You know the drill. Please leavethat five star review. Share
this with a friend. Subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform,
and we will see you next time onThe Aspiring Solopreneur. You
(22:49):
may be going solo in business,but that doesn't mean you're
alone.
In fact, millions of people arein your shoes, running a one
person business and figuring itout as they go. So why not
connect with them and learn fromeach other's successes and
failures? At LifeStarr, we'recreating a one person business
community where you can go tomeet and get advice from other
solopreneurs. Be sure to join inon the conversations at
(23:10):
community.lifestarr.com.
Hey, listeners. Today, we sit down with self
(00:02):
trust coach, Dawn Ledet, touncover why missed goals aren't
self sabotage, and why yournegative self talk might be the
sneakiest thing holding youback. From turning inner critics
into curious companions, toplanning audacious goals that
actually fit in your life, thisconversation will have you
rethinking everything youthought you knew about follow
through. So grab your coffee,reopen that dusty goal list of
(00:25):
yours, and tune in because it'snot too late to get back on
track. You're listening to theAspiring Solopreneur, the
podcast for those just taking abold step or even just thinking
about taking that step into theworld of solo entrepreneurship.
My name is Carly Ries and mycohost Joe Rando and I are your
guides navigating this crazy butawesome journey as a company of
(00:47):
one. We take pride in being partof LifeStarr, a digital hub
dedicated to all aspects ofsolopreneurship that has
empowered and educated countlesssolopreneurs looking to build a
business that resonates withtheir life's ambitions. We help
people work to live, not live towork. And if you're looking for
a get rich quick scheme, this isnot the show for you. So if
(01:08):
you're eager to gain valuableinsights from industry experts
on running a business the rightway the first time around or
want to learn from the misstepsof solopreneurs who paved the
way before you, then stickaround.
We've got your back becauseflying solo in business doesn't
mean you're alone. Okay. SoDawn, at the time of this
recording, it is March and allof those New Year's goals that
(01:31):
everybody was so excited aboutare now either coming true or
they are long since attempted.Or all gone by the wayside. And
you are just so great at goalsetting, goal achievement that's
like kinda your shtick.
We always advise people to dogoal setting as like the first
(01:54):
thing they do when they whenthey start their business. So
now that we've hit that point ofthe year, and people might need
some encouragement, why aren'tmissed goals a self sabotage
problem? Like let's get to theroot of this and keep that
momentum going.
Dawn Ledet (02:10):
Absolutely. You know, the problem with labeling
missed goals, missedopportunities, delays in goals
as self sabotage is we miss outon valuable data in reaching our
goals. It's a reduction ofwhat's actually happening.
Right? And then it creates itsown big hurdle to overcome,
(02:34):
which makes it feel harder andmore uncomfortable. It becomes
this battle of you against youinstead of you and the real
obstacles and challenges thatcome with every goal and let's
say new endeavor. So what arethose like surprising things
that hold people back fromachieving their goals that they
(02:55):
may not be aware of? They justthink it's all my fault and they
don't see those blind spots.It's that we forget that
discomfort is normal. Itactually can be expected. We end
up When we think that discomfortis a problem, we end up fighting
(03:15):
against ourselves instead of forthe results we want.
Joe Rando (03:19):
You mean like you're fighting against the discomfort
or you're fighting basicallybeing angry at yourself for not
making the goals? I just wannaunderstand.
Dawn Ledet (03:29):
Absolutely. Because what happens is, I like to
remind, like, all our dedicatedfitness entrepreneurs out there,
that it's similar, to makingtime for your workouts. It's not
comfortable, but you do it forthe after effect benefits. Or
for our parents out there, it'sso hard, right? The teen years,
(03:53):
the rebellious moments, and thenwe bask in the rewards of first
steps and graduations andsuccesses.
When we normalize that hard ispart of it, that if things are
difficult and that we connect tothe times that we do do
difficult things for the netpositive results, we have a way
(04:17):
to work with ourselves insteadof against the discomfort.
Because when we make thediscomfort a problem, that's
when we reach for those go tocomforts, which often are things
like working on a task that'smore familiar, that's easier for
you, that, or stepping away andgoing to scroll social media or
(04:38):
answer emails. Because these arejust easier, take less effort
than addressing the discomfortat hand.
Carly Ries (04:45):
Those are the not important things, Joe, that we
always talk about.
Joe Rando (04:48):
Yeah. Not urgent, not important. But question, What
about the propensity of somepeople, I'm not talking about
myself by any stretch, to setgoals that are overly ambitious
and then run up against realityand feel badly about the fact
(05:10):
that, gee, I didn't achieve allthe goals I set out.
Dawn Ledet (05:13):
Right. I mean, I don't think there are goals that
are too ambitious, to be honest.I think our planning for how to
follow through with those goalsis what is understated. So we
make a plan that doesn't alignwith our lives, and then we beat
ourselves up for not achievingthose goals instead of making a
(05:36):
plan that actually aligns and isdoable. So the goal can be super
audacious.
Just make the plan.
Joe Rando (05:44):
The execution. Yeah. If do something huge, you don't
wanna try to do it in the nextmonth. You wanna maybe allow the
next year is what you're saying.
Dawn Ledet (05:54):
Absolutely. So the way we do success dates or goal
deadline dates, whatever termyou wanna use in the self trust
lab, we do it based on actuallylaying out what does it take to
achieve this goal. Let's look atall everything that it takes,
and let's plan it out. How muchtime do I wanna spend on this
(06:16):
each week, each day, eve eachmonth? And then that gives you
your deadline.
Joe Rando (06:21):
That's tough though sometimes. When you're doing
something you've never donebefore, and you go, oh, think
it's gonna be this, this, this.And then you do it, you go, oh
no, there were all these otherthings I never thought about.
Right?
Dawn Ledet (06:32):
Well, that's when the evaluation becomes so
important. We have to learn fromourselves along the way. Of
course, you're not gonna knowexactly how to do it because we
don't know what it takes to getsomething done until we've done
it. But if we're taking eachstep along the way and learning,
oh, hey, that step is gonna takethree more weeks. Let me adjust
(06:53):
for that.
Instead of using that energy tobeat ourselves up for not being
able to get it done, we canlearn from ourselves and create
an execution plan that actuallyworks.
Joe Rando (07:04):
That's really great.
Carly Ries (07:06):
I feel like you're dangling a carrot here. Can you
kind of go into your practicalframework that you help people
with? Because you're like, well,you evaluate, you set the goals
and what it takes. And I'm like,oh, I know there's more and I
want to know more.
Dawn Ledet (07:22):
Yes. Well, I believe truly that it only takes three
skills to achieve anything. Andit's make decisions, follow
through, and then have your ownback. And in that have your own
back piece is the evaluationprocess.
It's learning from what worked,what didn't work, and what we
(07:44):
can do differently to adjust ina way that works for us. And
when we can filter any strategythat you have, you can filter it
through those three skills andreally boil it down to simplify
it because we get caught up inall the noise and rhetoric of
everything that it takes insteadof tuning in and listening and
(08:09):
learning from what we're alreadydoing. There's so much wisdom
there. And when we don't mindthat wisdom, we don't mind that
data, then we often go into allthe self talk that Joe was
mentioning about like, why isn'tthis working? And this is, you
know, I'm terrible.
Carly Ries (08:26):
Well, so let's talk about that self talk for a
second. Because I'd imagine thatis 90% of goal setting is just
how you how you treat yourselfbasically. And if you're like,
oh, I'm so stupid. I can'tbelieve I do not think about
that in the plan. Do youremember maybe a decade ago that
little the video of that littlegirl that went viral that's
like, I love my mom.
(08:46):
I love my Jessica. Joe, I don'tknow if you ever saw that but
Joe Rando (08:50):
I saw it.
Carly Ries (08:50):
All these affirmations. And if only we
could all be like that in themorning because we're not. And
it's so much easier to nitpickthe things that we're doing
wrong than it is to do thethings that we are doing right.
So what is the connectionbetween self talk and goal
achievement?
Dawn Ledet (09:11):
Absolutely. Like any strategy can work truly, but you
have to have self trust toexecute it. And it starts with
our inner dialogue.
Our inner dialogue is sopowerful. And it contains so
much wisdom just waiting to beheard. And you hear that part
clearly when you're, you know,deciding on your goal, when you
(09:32):
are sure of what you want, whenyou are thinking about all the
ways that you wanna serve yourlife, your family, your clients.
But often what we're listeningto is what I call the lobby
noise. So if you think of a busylobby filled with voices of
other people, of experts, ofyour family and friends, of your
past, paired with your owndoubts and insecurities and
(09:55):
fears, we spend so much time inthat lobby and that's when we
start to feel overwhelmed andthat's when we start to create
confirmation bias for we havethoughts like, I suck and this
is too hard for me.
And then boy does our brain goto find evidence to support it.
(10:16):
And I love to remind people, andyou'll recognize this in
yourself if you think about it.You say something like that and
your brain immediately starts tobring up evidence from the past.
Remember when you didn't do thatone thing you said you were
gonna do? Remember when youdidn't follow that meal plan?
Remember when you didn't finishthat course? It just is so good.
Joe Rando (10:36):
don't know if this is a question or not, but I think
about people I've known, and youknow, growing up, my parents,
they were really great. I mean,they were really nice to me.
They made me feel good aboutmyself. I kind of didn't trust
them because of the rest of theworld that maybe they were,
exaggerating a little bit, whichthey absolutely were. But, I
(10:58):
kind of came up with this, youknow, pretty positive
surrounding, at least in termsof my family.
And I know people that grew upwith really awful messages being
given to them from birth. And Ifeel like what you're saying
makes total sense, but I justwanna point out that there are
some people that are gonnastruggle with this a lot more
(11:18):
than others to get rid of thoseI call them the tapes playing in
your head of the things thatmake you feel like you're not
competent or capable. And wannaI mean, I don't know. You may
have opinions on this. I justdon't wanna put it out there
like, hey.
You know, I just have to getover that. Some people are gonna
struggle. Some people gonna needtherapy to get to that point
where they can deal with that.
Dawn Ledet (11:38):
Sure. It's less about changing that. That is the
key piece of this. It's notabout affirmations and turning
every thought you have into apositive thought. I would not
recommend that at all, as amatter of fact.
But it is changing therelationship with those
thoughts. So understanding theorigin of them, that's what I
(11:59):
write about in the Master YourInner Dialogue, is we wanna
understand that we do have thesevoices, whether we created them
out of protection for ourselveswhen we were younger, whether
they were actual external voicesthat said words to us, how we
(12:19):
internalized them. And soidentifying the origin of them
creates a separation from them.They are voices. They are not
you.
And then you can start to createa dialogue with them so that
when you hear something like,what's wrong with me? You can
actually answer it with nothingis what I would hope you would
(12:45):
say. But I can tell you formyself, that one used to come up
for me a lot and I hear it a lotfrom my clients. What's wrong
with me? And sometimes you sayit so innocently, like kind of
jokingly like, oh, what's wrongwith me?
I dropped my phone. What's wrongwith me? But confirmation bias
is real. And when we don'tanswer that question, our brain
(13:05):
wants to prove us right. Itloves to prove us right.
And it goes to look forevidence. And when there's all
of that lobby noise giving youevidence, then we can live in
that space. But if we answer itlike my answer in the beginning
was just everything and nothingbecause it made me chuckle a
little bit. I thought it waskind of funny. I've realized
(13:27):
that that still had someconfirmation bias challenges
with it.
But so now I can cleanly saynothing. Like nothing's wrong
with me and I might bestruggling with something right
now. But that's the opening toactually connect to yourself
instead of disconnecting. Whatwe normally do when we
internalize those thoughts orquestions is we end up creating
(13:51):
more disconnect. We either wannaduck and run, or we want to
fight against them instead ofcreating more internal
connection and working withourselves.
Carly Ries (13:58):
So would you recommend that people kind of
practice this proactively andget that, like, even when
they're not struggling withsomething, they really like
rehearse that? Or when somethingcomes up, that's when they have
these inner discussions. Howwould you approach that?
Dawn Ledet (14:14):
Just beginning to see it as a dialogue is so
helpful. Don't try and rewriteyour story. Your story is your
story, there's so much beauty init. Even the difficult stories
have so much beauty. But here'swhat happens.
Our inner dialogue, we hear itin a tone. Right? So whether you
(14:34):
hear it in the tone of a judgeor a bully or a critic, our
inner dialogue actually doesn'thave a tone. It's one we give
it. And so my invitation is toneutralize that tone, is to
start catching thoughts andmaybe even just restating them
(14:55):
without any tone at all, or inthe tone of a child or in the
tone of a robot.
I have clients that use Britishaccents. Do something that takes
that sting out of it, the storythat it's carried for so long
and turn it into an actualconversation. So like if you
(15:17):
hear this will never work inthat tone of just like bully,
This will never work. You'relikely to either believe it or
push against it. And that'swhere our goals get paused or
delayed or even released.
But what if you heard that willnever work with no tone or maybe
(15:40):
in the tone of a child? You maylean in and get curious. And I
always invite you to take it asan invitation of two types.
First is an invitation to affirmyourself, your path, or your
goal, or second as an invitationfor a new perspective. So this
(16:01):
looks like, if you're seeing itas an invitation for, to affirm
yourself, your path, your goal,that will never work.
Could be like, and it totallycould. And it will. It's like,
oh yeah, this is just remindingme. If we think about, you know,
we actually pay people tochallenge our thoughts
sometimes. We're just being ableto do that for ourselves here a
(16:23):
little bit, but in aconstructive way.
So the second would be, youknow, that will never work. We
might wanna look at it and belike, okay, what is a way that
could work better? Maybe thereis something here that is not
aligning. Maybe there's somewisdom. If I walk through that
(16:44):
lobby into the door of my wisdomand intuition, maybe there
actually is something here thatI wanna reconsider before I keep
moving forward.
Carly Ries (16:53):
So you're saying like it doesn't have a tone, but
we assign it the tone. And mytone is subtle with mine because
it's self deprecation. And soinstead of saying, you're so
stupid, blah blah blah, it's oh,there's Carly biting off more
than she can chew again. Andthat I'll save that bit for
(17:16):
another time, I guess.
But that often to people doesn'tcome off as negative self talk
because they think it's, oh,well I'm being funny, it's not
true. But really it is stillnegative self talk in disguise.
How should people approach thatif they're kinda turning it into
(17:36):
a Yeah.
Dawn Ledet (17:38):
I mean it's just always being on to your
confirmation bias. There'snothing wrong with saying any of
these things, to be honest. It'sjust how is it supporting you in
moving forward? So if you'resaying something like, there's
Carly biting off more than shecan chew, true, have an answer
for that. Because you know itexists now.
You know that's something thatis part of your repertoire, part
(18:02):
of your self talk. And so if youhave an answer ready for it,
such as, turns out I can chew alot, or maybe here's something
that I wanna, pull off the platejust for today. Or maybe I wanna
rethink where this lands in myday, week, or monthly schedule.
Joe Rando (18:22):
Yeah. I really like this, and I wanna point out that
what I love about this is thatit's not Tony Robbins, like, get
up every morning and look in themirror. I'm great. I'm great.
And part of you is going, no.
No. I'm just lying to myself andusing a mirror and lots of
(18:43):
physical motion. And it's like,this is more this feels very
real to me. like it. It feelslike, yeah, I've gotta come to
terms with this thing.
I'm gonna give it a maybe whatdo you think about the idea? My
wife works with children withanxiety, and she gives the
anxiety a name. The kids give ita name. And, I mean, just give
(19:04):
whatever that thing is that'ssaying this to a name and deal
with it like you deal with anannoying coworker.
Dawn Ledet (19:13):
I'd love for it to get to a point where it's not an
annoying coworker. Becauseagain, we're not trying to
create more division. And that'smy other struggle with self
sabotage is we divide ourselvesinto these pieces. Like there's
pieces of us against us, as ifwe're not all for ourselves. And
what we really need is a unitedfront.
(19:35):
There's enough out there for usto battle. We need a united
front to move forward with it.And so we wanna become just
friends with our inner dialogue.We wanna connect to it. It's not
rainbows and daisies, so don'ttry and make it sound like
rainbows and daisies, but takecare of yourself through it.
When there's some discomfortthat wants to pull you away from
(19:56):
the task at hand, introducecomforts that actually support
forward movement. So it's justretraining those go to habits of
comfort into habits of comfortthat actually support forward
movement.
Carly Ries (20:11):
Dawn, I think the thing I love most about what you
do for people is that thisapplies to everybody.
I have never met a single personthat's like, I'm setting this
goal and I achieved it withease. I'm unless they set like,
I'm going out to get mynewspaper and then they grab
their newspaper. But like realgoals, this applies to every
single person, especiallysolopreneurs who would have that
(20:32):
whole who don't have their ideasdesolate to off of other people.
They are the person that theybounce those ideas off of.
Joe Rando (20:37):
That and the fact that they don't have a boss
going, get this done byThursday. You know, they have to
be that boss. So, yeah, I mean,this is kind of critical ways of
thinking about things for a lotof or maybe all solopreneurs,
which is, I think it soundsreally powerful to me.
Carly Ries (20:54):
Well, I want people to find out about more about
what you do, which we'll get toin a second. But before that,
you help people find successthrough self trust. So we have
to ask you, what is yourfavorite quote about success?
Dawn Ledet (21:07):
Oh, it probably won't surprise you since I am
the self trust coach, but myfavorite quote is self trust is
the first secret of success. Andthat's Ralph Waldo Emerson.
Carly Ries (21:18):
I was gonna say, like, did you write that? I've
heard he's pretty reputable, soI guess that's good one. Well,
Dawn, where can people find youif they wanna learn more?
Dawn Ledet (21:31):
If you are recognizing, that your inner
dialogue is impacting yourability to follow through and
trust yourself, I have a book,it's called Master Your Inner
Dialogue. It's the shortest readever, but it's a great guide for
shifting the way you talk toyourself so that you can create
that unified front towards allof your goals. So you can stop
(21:53):
second guessing and startfollowing through and create
more ease. Like you said, Carly,it's not gonna be easy. And so
that's why we have to normalizediscomfort, but we have to
create that united front towardsit so that we can achieve what
you want.
And look, I know that reading abook is just the beginning, so
I've created Beyond the Pages.It's an email series that
(22:16):
actually walks you through thebook with deeper insights and
actionable steps so that you canintegrate the concepts into your
daily life. And you can find itthe selftrustcoach.com.
Carly Ries (22:27):
Easy enough. That sounds great. Well, Dawn, thank
you so much for coming on theshow today. This has been so
helpful. And listeners, thankyou so much for tuning in.
You know the drill. Please leavethat five star review. Share
this with a friend. Subscribe onyour favorite podcast platform,
and we will see you next time onThe Aspiring Solopreneur. You
(22:49):
may be going solo in business,but that doesn't mean you're
alone.
In fact, millions of people arein your shoes, running a one
person business and figuring itout as they go. So why not
connect with them and learn fromeach other's successes and
failures? At LifeStarr, we'recreating a one person business
community where you can go tomeet and get advice from other
solopreneurs. Be sure to join inon the conversations at
(23:10):
community.lifestarr.com.
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