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What if you could get more of what you want in life? But not through pushing, forcing, or pressure.
You can.
When it comes to money, time, and energy, no one’s gonna turn away more.
And Kate Northrup, Bestselling Author of Money: A Love Story and Do Less and host of Plenty, is here to help you expand your capacity to receive all of the best.
As a Money Empowerment OG who’s been at it for nearly 2 decades, Kate’s the abundance-oriented best friend you may not even know you’ve always needed.
Pull up a chair every week with top thought leaders, luminaries, and adventurers to learn how to have more abundance with ease.
When I have an idea that a goal has to be achieved in a certain amount of time, it creates stress and pressure in my body, and it creates a sense of scarcity and lack. Welcome to Plenty. I'm your host Kate Northrup and together we are going on a journey to help you have an incredible relationship with money, time, and energy, and to have abundance on every possible level. Every week, we're gonna dive in with experts and insights to help you unlock a life of hunting. Let's go fill our cups.
Kate Northrup:So I wanna talk about goals today, which feels like, honestly, like a bit little bit of a robotic personal development topic. But I had an experience recently during our, Relax Money enrollment that was so visceral and so profound that I can't help but sharing it. Like, I must share this. So very often, people say, you know, they say that you have to set SMART goals. And like every goal setting, you know, thing I've ever been to, whether it was you know, I got started in the direct selling industry.
Kate Northrup:So in in network marketing, and there was like a lot of personal development training in that space, and one of the things was goal setting. And we always were told you have to start, set SMART goals. SMART goals meaning specific, measurable, actionable, relevant, and time bound. Right? So that's what a SMART goal is.
Kate Northrup:And okay, fine. That works for some people. What I found is that there's a couple of things about SMART goals. And one of them is that I do like specificity. I do like measurable, because that way you know, did I hit the goal or not?
Kate Northrup:Right? Like, if my goal is, well, I just want to feel better, well, is that specific? No. How and and is it measurable? Like, how will I know if I achieved it or not?
Kate Northrup:So I get the smart and measurable part. Is it achievable? Right? Like, if I'm like, oh, I wanna go live on Mars, that's not achievable. So maybe maybe the a makes sense too.
Kate Northrup:Relevant to me, I wish we would change that word to resonant. Meaning, does this goal feel exciting to you? Does this goal feel connected to your heart? Does this goal feel connected to what really matters to you? So for example, I might set a goal around a monetary amount and feel like it's a little flat.
Kate Northrup:Like maybe I have a monetary goal for the launch. But for me, when I think about a monetary goal, it feels a little disembodied, it feels a little abstract, and honestly it feels pretty about me and not about who we're serving. So I always switch it and think about a certain number of people that I want to serve. So rather than I want this to be an x number of dollars launch, I think about I want to serve x number of people in this cohort of our program. And that really helps me for it to be a resonant goal.
Kate Northrup:But then the t is what really trips me up. The t is for trips you up, for me. And so the time bound thing gets real tricky, and I'll tell you why for me. When I have an idea that a goal has to be achieved in a certain amount of time, it creates stress and pressure in my body, and it creates a sense of scarcity and lack, and I find myself operating out of like, what if it doesn't happen? I gotta I gotta do more.
Kate Northrup:I gotta be more. I'm not enough. Like, it just triggers the fuck out of me, to be honest. And so in this last promotion, one thing that Mike did that I thought was so brilliant is after the first day of enrollment, he decided to not have the team tell him the launch numbers every day, because usually it would be like nine a. M.
Kate Northrup:And sometime in the evening we would know the launch numbers, we would know how many sales we'd made during a cart open, and after day one Mike said, You know what team, I actually don't want to know the numbers. If you want to know the numbers, you can ask our project manager, but please don't put them in the team thread. And so I followed suit because I was like, gosh, that actually sounds really relaxing. And so we were able to do our four day enrollment period not knowing how we were doing, quote unquote. Not measuring how we were doing in terms of our goal on external results, but instead focusing on sticking with the launch plan, showing up in our fullness, being as heart open, service oriented, serving the people, and just following through on what we had already planned.
Kate Northrup:So we didn't end up getting into graspiness, we didn't end up getting into, oh my gosh, we're almost at the end of our launch, we're not at our goal yet, what do we do? Because always when I have known the numbers during an enrollment period, there is always a freaking emotional roller coaster where I go into a dip thinking, it's not enough. I haven't done enough. Oh my gosh. It's it's not gonna work out.
Kate Northrup:I I, like, spin out. It's not long, but there is a moment where I always meet face to face with scarcity, and it just is like, ugh. So we decided to detach from the results and instead stay focused on the process, and there was one particular moment. So the launch opened on a Monday. I think it was the Tuesday I still ended up emailing our project manager for the launch numbers, so even though Mike decided not to know them, I was like, well I still want to know them.
Kate Northrup:So I found out what they were, and they weren't as high as I would have expected at that time in the enrollment, and they started to spin out. And I started to go into scarcity and fear and lack, and like all this craziness that I was just like, this does not, this does not serve me. A, I don't want to be showing up on my calls this way. I don't want to be showing up on my lives this way. Like, this is not the frequency.
Kate Northrup:And so I did my own tools, I did my helical breathing nervous system tool, if you're in Relaxed Money, helical breathing is in the nervous system healing toolkit. It is one of my absolute faves. I did a whole dancing and singing break in my bathroom. I did like, know, it was like about five minutes of frequency shifting. I got myself back in alignment, and I ended up having a conversation with my girlfriend Liz.
Kate Northrup:I love having conversations with her about my business because she's not in our industry. She understands our industry, but she's not in our industry. She's incredibly successful in her own lane, in her industry as a business owner. So she doesn't bring any layers of her own conditioning or her own she's not projecting anything on me during my launches or enrollments because it's like she has a totally different business model. And so it's sometimes why like we actually can get the best parenting advice from our friends who aren't parents, for example.
Kate Northrup:I know that sounds kind of silly, but sometimes we bring so much baggage to giving advice about things we know quote unquote know so much about from our own experience versus something where we're just like total beginner's mind. And so Liz, in our quick back and forth voice memo exchange, helped me to realize that it was the tea that was tripping me up. I had this idea. So I had a particular goal, the number of students I wanted to serve in this particular way, and I had it very time bound. I was like, it must happen by this Thursday at midnight when we close the doors, yada yada yada yada.
Kate Northrup:And I was like, it was making me feel so stressed out. And in my quick back and forth with Liz, I realized, Oh, I can just remove the T. Right? Like, I can still have that goal. Do I have any doubt that we can achieve this goal?
Kate Northrup:No, I don't. Do I have any doubt that I can achieve this goal in some way this year? No, I don't. I have no doubt about it. It was putting false urgency on that time bound goal that it needed to happen in this certain way by this certain time.
Kate Northrup:That's what was limiting my own capacity to connect with abundance. That's what was cutting off my connection to Source. And you can tell you're disconnected from source when you don't feel good. Like, that's all you need to know. When you don't feel good, you are disconnected from source.
Kate Northrup:And my false urgency, my addiction to creating false urgency was disconnecting me from source. And when I took off the t, when I took off the time bound, then suddenly I was like, oh, the world is my oyster. This doesn't have to happen by Thursday. Like, it can happen in an infinite number of ways all throughout these other offers in our business, all throughout these other ways we do business. And I suddenly felt so spacious and so blissed out.
Kate Northrup:And I was able to move through the rest of the launch, a, not knowing the launch numbers, which also helped me stay in the beingness and on the journey as opposed to focusing on the destination, and then it just helped me feel so spacious and abundant in general. Now the cool thing is this actually was our highest enrollment period of all time. It was our biggest launch by far. It was a banner launch. But what was so cool is I didn't know the numbers until after the fact.
Kate Northrup:And by removing the T, by removing the time bound on my goal, I entered a field of spaciousness and abundance that felt instantly infinite. So if you have financial goals, if you have goals of any kind, I invite you to take off the tee. Like, just see what it would be like if you removed the false urgency, possibly replaced the relevant with resonant, and see if your relationship with the goals becomes more fun. Because here's what any wise elder will tell you. There is no there there.
Kate Northrup:It is about the journey, not the destination. Every single one of us has achieved something we've dreamed of in this lifetime, whether it was the medal, the diploma, the wedding, the closing on the piece of real estate, the buying of the car that you'd ever dreamed of, the the biggest cash week of your life. And it's great. Like, it's great in the moment. And then it's like, yep, I'm still me, still living my life, still have laundry, still need to empty the dishwasher.
Kate Northrup:Like, fundamentally, there is no there there. If we are not filling ourselves up along the way, if we're not fully enjoying the moment, if we're not making the experience of achieving our goals as delicious, if not more so than the achievement of the goal itself, every single goal we ever achieve will feel empty in the end, and will absolutely never give you a sense of sustainable joy, because no achievement will ever give you a sense of sustainable joy. Only being the fullness of who you are can ever give you that sense of sustainable joy. It's about the connection with others. It's about the connection with source, the connection with ourselves.
Kate Northrup:And the truth is manufacturing false timelines does not contribute to most of our aliveness. It just repatterns old neural patternings that are addicted to stress and pressure. And I was so proud of myself and I was so excited when I could feel myself in the moment unplugging from my addiction to false urgency and just removing the timeline and entering the infinite field of abundance in an instant on a smelly street corner right here in Miami in the burning hot sun. So that is my story for you. Please feel free to remove the tea, and I hope that helps you in your goal setting.
Kate Northrup:Thank you. See you next time. What if managing money felt effortless? You've worked so hard to earn money, so why does it feel stressful? Well, I wanna introduce you to something brand new that I've created called the money reset because abundance starts in your body, not in your bank account.
Kate Northrup:This free audio experience will help you rewire your nervous system for wealth, stop the money in, money out cycle and create a foundation for true wealth, and relax into a new relationship with money. Plus, it comes with the five minute calm cash flow ritual. So you can have financial clarity and magnetism anytime you want. All you need to do to get the free money reset is go to katenorthrop.com/reset.