Why Your Financial Goals Are Keeping You Stuck (And What Your Soul Really Wants Instead)

Jul 16
9 min read

Why isn't my money mindset working?

Most financial goals are inherited from parents, culture, or peers, rather than inspired within you
When a money goal feels like an exhausting uphill struggle, that’s a signal it isn’t really yours
Beneath many financial goals lies a fear of lack rather than a genuine desire for abundance
Traditional goal-setting (including SMART goals) shrinks your biggest dreams into a constrictive box
The “goal behind the goal” is what your soul is truly craving
Flipping that uncomfortable truth into a positive desire is more powerful than any income target
Financial neutrality is one of the most transformative money mindset shifts available to spiritually-minded entrepreneurs
When you build goals from desire rather than fear, you stop running away from lack and start magnetising the opportunities, income, and life you actually want

Why Your Money Goals Might Be Keeping You Stuck

It has been one of the most pivotal and painful realisations of my life that all of the goals I had set in the past, all of the things I thought would make me successful, were not the things I really wanted. These goals were masking deeper desires. Desires and yearnings so deep I was totally unaware of them.

Instead, I spent years - if not decades - chasing after success that was just on the surface level.

This included chasing after financial goals. I don’t think that having goals to bring more abundance or richness into your life are wrong - if you love it, then you should go for it! But the financial goals I had weren’t about those things. Every time I set a goal like “I want to earn a good salary” or “I want to make six figures this year”, the goals were coming from a place that automatically guaranteed the process of me getting to these results - and the results themselves - would be disappointing.

So if you’ve been in this position, set financial goals like this, and then wondered why they didn’t seem to work out - this article is for you.

The Trouble With Surface-Level Financial Goals

I want to start with the idea of surface-level success. This kind of success comes from goals that are built in the material world: the practical, the corporate, the world that’s focused on money and job titles and measurable things. And there’s nothing inherently wrong with any of that; after all, we are spiritual beings having a human experience! The problem is what these goals obscure by only focusing on the material.

Traditional SMART goals, or even the more general versions of goal-setting most of us know about, take a really big dream and put it into a very small box. These goals tend to be linear, highly controlled, and competitive. These aren’t goals that are written for true, deep, spiritual success.

When we try to apply the SMART framework to something as emotionally charged and energetically loaded as money, the framework falls down. There are too many unknowns, too many factors that go into the ebb and flow of money for you to control it with the tight grip that SMART goals encourage you to have.

Even deeper than that, often these goals which bring about surface-level financial success are not actually yours. They come from somewhere else; you have inherited them from places like:

Your parents and their desire for you to get a ‘good job’
A media culture that thinks success is only the numbers in your bank account
Peer groups (in the past and now) who all crystallise around the same income

This is a key reason why often you’ll find certain financial goals are exhausting - because it isn’t yours, it isn’t what you truly want, and so working towards this goal feels like a constant uphill struggle.

“I Want a Good Salary”: What That Goal Was Really Telling Me

For many years, I had this goal of “earning a good salary”. I didn’t know what a good salary was, I didn’t question it, but I was committed to that vague, unhelpful goal.

This goal became part of a huge five-year plan I made in my late 20s. It covered everything I wanted to do, including the money I wanted to make, and because I was obsessive and pushing myself, I achieved about 80% of that five-year plan in just 12 months.

The result? Nothing. I felt numb, apathetic, even burnt out by the whole process. I’d been focusing so hard on the goals that I never questioned whether they were, in fact, my goals.

When I finally asked myself why I wanted to earn a good salary - the way a toddler asks why, over and over again until it gets uncomfortable - I got to the ugly truth. That goal wasn’t ever mine. It came from my parents, who both grew up without much money and who impressed on me the necessity to get a “proper job” from an early age.

That goal wasn’t based in the pleasure of financial independence, or the joy of being able to take friends to dinner or book a spontaneous holiday. It was something far less inspiring.

I was afraid of not having enough money.

I was terrified of not having enough, of going without, of lack.

That was the real reason - the goal behind the goal. It wasn’t about what I loved, but what I feared. Once I saw that, everything began to change.

The Six-Figure Business Myth and The Money Block Behind It

This same pattern shows up consistently for people in our field. The specific number changes - maybe for you it’s a six-figure business, a certain monthly recurring revenue, or hitting a particular income milestone - but the fear underneath is often exactly the same.

When someone tells me they want to build a six-figure business, the traditional coaching response is to take that goal at face value and help them get there. But I’ve learned to pause and ask: Why do you want a six-figure business? What’s really driving that?

More often that you’d expect, the dream of building these businesses or earning these striking sums of money comes from a place of lack, fear, and anxiousness - yes, even from those shiny boss lady coaches you see on Instagram who have ‘made it’.

The goal of a six-figure business, when it’s based in fear or lack, will never make you happy. Every time you feel short of your target, business slows, or life just happens, you’ll feel that fear rise up again and the external evidence will tell you that you’re not enough. While you might think you’re moving towards a number in your bank account, you’re actually running away from a feeling - and that is exhausting.

I want you to keep being ambitious. I want you to expand and experience the richness of the world. I just want you to do it from a place that is sustainable, pleasurable and transformative.

The Goal Behind the Goal

Here’s what I’ve come to understand about goals, especially financial ones. Goals are simply the mind’s way of justifying the soul’s deep desire to play, expand, and grow.

Our minds need a puzzle: objectives, destinations, structure, things to look out for, things to move towards. But beneath every goal our conscious mind creates is a feeling, a soul-level craving that is so much deeper and more real than anything your mind could come up with.

I call this the goal behind the goal. It’s what your soul, your spiritual being, is truly yearning for. And when you find that true goal, and reorient your actions to focus on that instead, you’ll find that:

You become more magnetic to opportunities you love
Taking action on your goal feels enjoyable and enriching
You feel a sense of relief in knowing what is truly driving you
Your sensation of success expands significantly

This is the foundation of my Soul-Driven Goals Methodology: goal-setting and planning driven entirely by your soul’s desires rather than by inherited expectations or fear-based thinking.

Instead of asking your mind “What do you want to achieve?”, my method asks your soul “What are you truly craving?” Not in this material world alone, but on every level of your being.

How to Turn Financial Fears Into Soul-Driven Abundance: The Why Game

So how do you actually do this? How do you move from tension and fear to magnetism, action and enrichment?

This process forms step two in my Soul-Driven Goals method. I call it The Why Game, and here’s how it works.

First, identify your current financial goal. Whatever it is right now - a salary figure, a revenue target, a business milestone - write it down or bring it to mind.

Next, ask yourself ‘Why?’. Just like a toddler, keep asking ‘Why?’ until it becomes uncomfortable. Don’t stop at the first reasonable-sounding answer. Go deeper!

You’ll know when you’ve reached the real thing - the goal behind the goal - because you’ll probably feel a bit uncomfortable. There is normally a sensation of recognition, of truth and awareness, even a bit of ‘ew gross!’ as you see what’s really going on.

In my example, when I asked myself why I wanted to make a good salary, I eventually came to the conclusion that felt ugly, uncomfortable, but extremely real: I was afraid of not having enough money.

Finally, you’re going to take that uncomfortable truth that is rooted in fear, lack or avoidance, and turn it into something beautiful. It should be something you want to move towards; on what you desire, not what you dread.

For me, I translated my root fear of not having enough into something much more powerful - even more powerful than financial abundance:

I want to feel confident with my income.

I want to feel comfortable financially.

I want to feel neutral about money.

This last goal of financial neutrality might sound underwhelming at first. But it’s truly one of the most powerful money mindset shifts you can make.

Financial neutrality means money stops being a source of anxiety and fear. It means you’re no longer in a stress response every time you check your bank account, or whether money is coming in or out. Having this mindset means you’re free to build from a place of genuine desire rather than chronic worry, which leads you as an intuitive, creative person to do your best work. And it is so much better than any income goal.

This Why Game transforms you, transporting you from fear, frustration, tension and inaction that comes with surface-level goals that were never yours to a deeper feeling of relief, ease, focus and enjoyment - one your whole being can actually move towards.

Overcoming Money Blocks: Three Exercises to Try Today

If this is resonating with you, here’s how to start working with these ideas and exercises right now.

1) Audit Your Current Financial Goals

Look at what you’ve written down, or what’s been knocking about your head for the last months (or years!). Which of these goals feel like an uphill struggle? Which ones feel frustrating, heavy, or like they belong to someone else? Those are the ones to start questioning.

2) Play The Why Game With One

Pick the financial goal that feels tense or charged, and ask yourself ‘Why?’. Ask it over and over until you reach something that feels uncomfortably true. Trust me - you will recognise it in your body when you feel it. You’ll know you’ve gone past it when you are going round in a circle!

3) Turn The Goal Around

Take that uncomfortable truth and rewrite it. Focus on the desire, the relief, the ease, and the powerful feeling you actually want to experience. Write down the goal behind the goal - not what you’re running from, but what you’re running towards.

Ready to Transform Your Money Mindset? Here’s Your Next Step.

If this has resonated with you and you want to start shifting your relationship with money goals right now, I’d love for you to take my free assessment.

It’s called What’s Really Stopping You? - around ten powerful questions that will give you a personalised result: the one thing you need most right now to start feeling successful and taking more aligned action on your goals.

Try the What’s Really Stopping You Quiz?

And if you’re ready to go deeper, to stop chasing surface-level financial success and start building from the inside out, I want to invite you into the Soul-Driven Goals Workshop.

I teach this whole method in it, including the Why Game, how to write your goals effectively, my 10 Rules of Wild Success, and how to design your goals around what your soul is truly craving rather than what fear is pushing you towards. It’s 2 hours long and available on demand to watch today.