Most people approach their goals with the wrong mindset (myself included!). They put SO much pressure on the goal and are crushed when they don’t meet it in their ideal timeframe. Or if they do meet it, they believe that they should have done it better or differently or faster. So they don’t even enjoy the win when they get it. (Boy, that really hits home for me!)

If you find yourself approaching your goals with either negative emotions or unattainably high expectations, a mindset shift may be in order. Your goals should inspire you to move forward and keep you on track, but they should also ebb and flow with your life.

Here’s the thing: your business does not exist in a vacuum.

Your life and your business are intertwined, and there NEEDS to be some give and take. You have life goals that are just as important as your business goals, and you need to leave space for one to take priority over the others from time to time.

I have a dear friend who is a very high-productivity, go-getter entrepreneur. She prides herself on how much she can get done – and get done well. She was fully in business growth mode, focusing on barely anything else, and then she and her husband decided to start a family.

When she got pregnant, she was beyond excited about the baby, but she quickly realized that her life and her business were going to change. We talked about this a lot. She was constantly convincing herself that it was ok to take maternity leave for as long as she needed to. She was talking herself into the fact that she needed grace for this new season of life. She told me that she had to remind herself DAILY that the exhaustion that comes from growing a human is real, and that it’s totally fine if she can’t produce the same way she used to, both mentally and physically.

That mindset shift can be really hard for an entrepreneur. But you NEED to give yourself permission to change your goals when your life, your mental health, or your circumstances change. Your life goals are just as important as your business goals, and as a small business owner, they are tightly intertwined.

In a previous issue of this newsletter, we talked about the concept of “perfect work/life balance” and how that’s an illusion. Sometimes your life changes and you need to allow a new imbalance to happen. There’s nothing wrong with that, you must give yourself the grace to figure out how to adjust accordingly.

So repeat after me: it’s ok to let your business goals change when your life changes. It’s ok to adjust. Give yourself permission to be OK with not meeting your goals if your personal life needs to take priority for a while.

I hope this is the reminder you need to cut yourself some slack, adjust your goals, and go into the second half of the year with renewed optimism and peace.