How to Set Goals When You're Already Carrying Too Much
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Sis,
I was twelve years old, sitting on a city bus in Detroit with a stack of utility bills in my lap and a checkbook in my backpack.
While other kids my age were worried about homework and sleepovers, I was calculating whether we had enough in the checking account to keep the lights on and still buy groceries for the week. My mom had gotten me a Michigan state ID and added me as a signer on her account because someone had to handle these things while she was at work.
The bus route to the utility companies became as familiar to me as the route to school. I learned to read grocery store flyers like financial documents, hunting for the best deals and mentally calculating how to stretch our food budget to last until the next paycheck. I knew which bills could wait a week and which ones couldn't. I knew how to prioritize because I had to.
That twelve-year-old girl didn't know she was learning one of the most valuable life skills she'd ever need: how to manage goals when you're already carrying more than you should.
The Weight of Too Much
Maybe your childhood looked different than mine, but I have a feeling you know what it's like to carry more than your fair share. Maybe you weren't paying utility bills at twelve, but you were emotionally supporting adults who should have been supporting you. Maybe you weren't grocery shopping for your family, but you were keeping everyone else's secrets and managing their problems.
Or maybe your "too much" came later. Maybe it's now. Maybe you're the mom who handles everything, the employee who gets all the extra projects, the friend everyone calls in a crisis, the daughter who manages aging parents, the woman who somehow became responsible for everyone else's happiness and well-being.
And somewhere in the middle of carrying all of that, you still have dreams. You still have things you want to accomplish, goals you want to reach, a vision for your life that goes beyond just managing everyone else's needs.
But how do you set goals when you're already stretched so thin you can barely keep up with what's already on your plate?
The Problem with Most Goal-Setting Advice
Here's what most goal-setting experts won't tell you: their advice is written for people who have margin. People who can wake up an hour earlier without falling apart. People who can say no to family obligations to focus on their dreams. People who aren't already carrying the emotional and practical weight of multiple households.
They'll tell you to dream big, to push through obstacles, to hustle harder. They'll give you elaborate planning systems and tell you to block out sacred time for your goals. They'll make you feel like if you can't find 2-3 hours a day for your dreams, you must not want them badly enough.
But what if you're already waking up at 5 AM? What if your "obstacles" are actually responsibilities you can't abandon? What if your "lack of hustle" is actually wisdom about your own capacity?
What if the problem isn't your commitment to your goals, but your approach to them?
What That Twelve-Year-Old Taught Me
That girl on the bus with the utility bills learned something that business coaches charge thousands to teach: when you have limited resources, you get really good at prioritizing. When you can't do everything, you learn to do what matters most, and you do it well.
She learned that sometimes the goal isn't to pay every bill in full. Sometimes the goal is to keep the lights on and negotiate a payment plan for the rest. She learned that sometimes the goal isn't to buy everything on the grocery list. Sometimes the goal is to make sure there's food for the week, even if it's not the food you originally planned for.
She learned that being creative and resourceful isn't a consolation prize. It's a superpower.
The Three-Tier Goal System
When you're already carrying too much, traditional goal-setting doesn't work. But here's what does: giving yourself multiple ways to win.
For every area where I want to see growth or change, I set three different targets:
The Dream Goal: This is the big, beautiful vision. The thing I'd love to accomplish if everything goes perfectly, if I have unlimited energy, if life cooperates completely. This is important because we need something to reach for, something that excites us and reminds us that we're not just surviving, we're still dreaming.
The Reality Goal: This is what's actually achievable given my current capacity, responsibilities, and season of life. This goal takes into account that I'm already carrying a lot, that unexpected things will come up, that some days I won't have the energy I thought I'd have. This is the goal that keeps me moving forward without setting me up for failure.
The Survival Goal: This is the bare minimum that still counts as progress. This is what I can accomplish even in my worst weeks, even when everything else falls apart, even when I'm operating on fumes. This goal ensures that I never have to start from zero, that even in difficult seasons, I'm still moving in the direction of my dreams.
Here's What This Looks Like in Real Life
Let's say your dream is to start a side business. Your three tiers might look like this:
Dream Goal: Launch my business with a website, social media presence, and three service offerings by the end of the year.
Reality Goal: Create one simple service offering and find my first five clients through word of mouth and social media.
Survival Goal: Spend 30 minutes each week researching my industry and connecting with one potential client or collaborator.
Or maybe your goal is to get healthier:
Dream Goal: Work out five days a week, meal prep every Sunday, and lose 30 pounds.
Reality Goal: Move my body three times a week (even if it's just a walk), plan healthier meals without stressing about perfection, and focus on how I feel rather than the scale.
Survival Goal: Take a 10-minute walk twice a week and drink one extra glass of water each day.
The Permission You Need
Here's what I need you to understand: achieving your Reality Goal or even your Survival Goal isn't settling. It's being wise about your capacity. It's honoring both your dreams and your current reality. It's choosing progress over perfection.
That twelve-year-old on the bus wasn't failing because she couldn't pay every bill in full every month. She was succeeding because she kept the lights on, kept food on the table, and figured out creative solutions when the original plan didn't work.
When your goals look different than everyone else's, that's wisdom, not failure. When you adjust your timeline or change your approach, that's flexibility, not giving up. When your version of success looks smaller and slower than what you see on social media, that's being realistic about your capacity.
Success looks like still dreaming while carrying more than your share. Success looks like being realistic about what's sustainable. Success looks like choosing to make progress rather than waiting for perfect conditions that may never come.
When Life Demands a Pivot
Sometimes, despite our best planning, life throws us curveballs that make even our Survival Goals feel impossible. The beauty of this system is that it builds in permission to pivot.
Maybe your business goal shifts from launching this year to doing the research and planning. Maybe your health goal shifts from working out to just getting enough sleep. Maybe your creative goal shifts from finishing the project to just showing up to it consistently, even if progress is slow.
This isn't giving up. This is wisdom. This is understanding that seasons change, capacity fluctuates, and sometimes the most loving thing you can do for yourself is adjust your expectations rather than abandon your dreams.
The Gift of Early Responsibility
I wouldn't wish the weight of adult responsibilities on any twelve-year-old. But I'm grateful for what that experience taught me: that you can be resourceful and responsible at the same time. That creativity often comes from constraint. That doing what you can with what you have is its own form of excellence.
If you learned early how to carry more than you should, you also learned skills that serve you now: prioritization, resourcefulness, resilience, and the ability to find solutions when there doesn't seem to be a clear path forward.
Those aren't consolation prizes. Those are superpowers.
Your Invitation
What dream have you been putting off because you don't have the capacity for the "right" way to pursue it? What goal have you abandoned because you couldn't do it at the pace or scale you thought you should?
What if you gave yourself three ways to win? What if you honored both your dreams and your reality? What if you let that wise, resourceful part of yourself design a path forward that works for the life you actually have, not the life you think you should have?
You've been carrying more than your share for long enough to know that you're capable of more than you sometimes give yourself credit for. But you also know your limits, your capacity, your current season.
Both of those truths can coexist. Your dreams can coexist with your responsibilities. Your goals can coexist with your reality.
You just need a system that honors all of it.
With love and respect for how much you're already handling,
Kalyn
What's one dream you've been putting off because it feels too big for your current capacity? Drop it in the comments - let's brainstorm how to make it work for your real life.
If this approach to goal-setting resonated with you, you might also find value in:
- My collection of planning tools and journals designed for women with full lives and big dreams
- Joining my email family for weekly encouragement that meets you where you are
- Exploring what life coaching might look like for someone ready to pursue goals without burning out
Kalyn Fahie is a faith-based life coach and author who believes that your dreams deserve to coexist with your reality. She writes from her home in St. Thomas, USVI, where she's still learning to balance reaching for more while honoring what is.