Your Goals Aren’t Yours — And You Know It

Borrowed ambition is sneaky. You set goals that look good on paper but feel hollow in real life—and deep down, you know it.

Let me take you back to a weird moment.

I was staring at my vision board.
It had all the usual suspects:

• A Lamborghini I didn’t care about driving
• A beach mansion I wasn’t going to live in
• A 7-figure stripe screenshot I copied from someone’s Instagram
• A quote that said “GRIND NOW, REST LATER”

I looked at it, and a single thought hit me like a freight train:

“Whose life is this?”

Because it sure as hell wasn’t mine.

It was a Pinterest board of borrowed ambition.
A vision crafted by comparison.
A future stitched together by marketing, not meaning.

The Trap of “Aspirational” Goals

You ever set a goal and realize…
You don’t really care about it?

You just thought you were supposed to.

That’s what we do, right?

We chase:

• 6-figure launches
• Million-dollar months
• 100k followers
• Passive income (that we grind 90 hours a week for)
• Some vague “financial freedom” goal we never define

We paste it on a whiteboard.
Declare it in masterminds.
Write it in morning journaling rituals.

But here’s the truth no one wants to admit:

We don’t want the goal — we want the feeling we think it’ll give us.

It was a Pinterest board of borrowed ambition.” (Already exists — keep this.)

And often, we’re chasing someone else’s version of success…
…in hopes it’ll finally feel like our own.

Who Sold You That Goal?

Let’s break this down.

When you first got into entrepreneurship — what did you want?

More time?
More peace?
More creative control?

And now?

You’ve got 3 different offers, 12 funnels, and a calendar that looks like a Jenga tower.
You’re still working weekends.
Still second-guessing everything.
Still stuck at the same revenue plateau.

The trap of borrowed ambition isn’t obvious until it’s too late.

Because somewhere along the way, you stopped asking:

“What do I really want?”
…and started asking:
“What should I want?”

The Quiet Guilt of Success That Isn’t Yours

Let me tell you about the weirdest month of my business.

It was my “best month ever.”

Biggest launch.
Biggest revenue.
Biggest team.
Biggest audience.

I should’ve been celebrating.

But instead?

I felt… flat.
Disconnected.
Even a little trapped.

And it finally clicked:

I had built a life that looked good on paper — but didn’t feel good in practice.

I didn’t hate it.

But I didn’t love it either.

Most of us wake up one day and realize we’ve been chasing borrowed ambition, not true desire.

Because every part of it was optimized for someone else’s approval.

I had built someone else’s dream.
Perfectly.
And I was stuck living in it.

Most of our goals aren’t even set by us. They’re curated by Instagram success reels, books like The Millionaire Fastlane or podcasts like The Tim Ferriss Show.

The Invisible Influence of the Internet

You know what’s wild?

Most of our goals aren’t even set by us.

They’re curated by:

• Instagram success reels
• Email list “income breakdowns”
• Podcast guests with perfect funnels
• Business books preaching exponential growth
• Coaches with goals they passed on like MLM scripts

We absorb it all.
Unquestioned.

Until we end up doing $30K launches we hate, just to post about them later.

That’s the real pandemic.

Borrowed ambition.
Disguised as discipline.

What If Your Goals Are the Problem?

Here’s a radical idea:

What if you’re not unmotivated…
You’re just chasing the wrong goal?

Let that sit for a second.

If you keep procrastinating on the thing you “said” you wanted…
If you keep avoiding the work you “committed” to…
If you keep dreading the calendar you built…

Maybe it’s not a discipline issue.

Maybe it’s misalignment.

And the cure isn’t another productivity hack — it’s honesty.

My Pivot Point: “What If I Chose Differently?”

I started asking a new set of questions.
Not “How do I scale faster?”
But “Why am I even scaling this?”

Not “How do I hit $100K months?”
But “What does enough look like — really?”

Not “How do I automate everything?”
But “What do I actually want to keep doing?”

And the answers?

They shocked me.

Because they didn’t sound like the internet.
They didn’t look sexy.
They weren’t “high-achiever” goals.

But they were mine.

And they gave me more energy than 10 funnels ever did.

Real Talk: Reflective Questions You Can’t Ignore

You don’t need more strategy right now.

You need honesty.

So ask yourself:

1. What goal are you pursuing that no longer excites you?
2. What did you copy from someone else without realizing it?
3. What version of success actually feels like peace to you?
4. If no one was watching, what would you build differently?
5. What does “enough” look like in your language, not the industry’s?

Answer those.

Let the truth be awkward.
And stop running from it.

When I Set “Unsexy” Goals, Everything Changed

Want to know the crazy part?

When I finally built my life and business around my goals — not the internet’s:

• My sales didn’t dip. They got cleaner.
• My team shrank. My profit grew.
• My audience deepened. My stress dropped.
• I took real weekends off — for the first time in years.

Because alignment creates flow.
And flow builds momentum without burnout.

But it only happens when you stop performing…
…and start choosing with clarity.

Here’s What I Want for You

I don’t want you to hustle harder.

I want you to come home to your own damn goals.

Not what your coach said.
Not what that launch bro posted.
Not what the hustle culture convinced you of.

But what you crave.
What you define as enough.
What you wake up excited about.

It’s not weak to want less.
It’s wise.

It’s not lazy to design your life slower.
It’s intentional.

It’s not small to say “no thanks” to scaling.
It’s sovereignty.

Because the best business you’ll ever build… is the one you actually want to keep living inside of.