WHAT'S UP DOC? CHASING THE PROVERBIAL CARROT
Dr. Krista Coombs, DrAc, IFMCP
September 5, 2025
In this week’s INSIGHTS for Healing by Design, I’d love to pique your curiosity about the impact your personal goal setting has had on your life so far and give you a path to better outcomes. If we aren’t addressing this major factor for growth, we tend to continue to decline by default rather than Heal by Design.
I know exactly the power self sabotaging early life’s now stale conditioning has on achieving goals.
I also am quite familiar with the hit to self esteem when falling short of reaching goals. We can become less inclined to set and strive for big goals if we experience these hits too many times.
Deciding on our goals, however, and overcoming beliefs around our ability to achieve them are important considerations that I hope I can inspire you to dig into.
Being an education geek, I LOVE September! It represents a new year for me, with the smell of pencils and paper and new binders and notebooks getting me all revved up for new ideas and new learnings! I’ve spent most of my life in some form of schooling and most of that education had programs that began in September.
So, right now, as we are moving into Fall, my brain is on overdrive reconsidering my goals in life and if they are genuinely appropriate for me right now. Goals need to change as you do.
Transitions like seasonal ones always make me question my beliefs, encouraging me to redefine how I want to live. This September is no different.
It has me especially considering the proverbial “🥕CARROT ON A STICK” idiom.
The carrot dangling from a line at the far end of a stick is a metaphor for a desirable reward – your goal achieved – while the stick holds the carrot at a bit of a distance but also can be used as a punishment to prod you along if you aren’t moving in the direction of the carrot.
➡️ In essence, the carrot is the enticement while the stick represents negative consequences and coercion and distance.
As I ponder this old idiom, it got me wondering a few things:
🥕Are the carrots in this metaphor – your rewards or goals – truly ones that are in your best interest to attain?
🥕Who has been most influential in choosing which carrots are dangling (you or others) and is this still appropriate for where you are in your life right now?
🥕Are you expecting to actually reach the carrot or expecting you’ll always be chasing it, suffering by getting prodded by the stick over and over?
🥕And finally, if the carrots are good for us, when we do finally reach them, do we celebrate this and sit down to eat the dang carrot already?
Goals are tricky little beasts, my friend, and I’d love for you and me to become more like Bugs Bunny and always get our carrots!
As a goal-oriented person, trained to be this way since my youth, I know exactly how powerful, intimidating, destructive, crazy-making, overwhelming, negative and positive, and frustrating working towards big, audacious goals and even smaller, bite-sized ones, can be.
I also am very familiar with perceived “failure” when I haven’t managed to reach some of my bigger goals in life or am forced, by life’s curve balls, to change direction mid-way towards them.
I’ve derailed more times than I can count. And each time I’ve felt deep sadness at my perceived inadequacy.
That destructive side effect of not achieving a chosen goal has long lasting consequences. It’s like the carrot, never to be caught, leaves the stick to poke and prod us for the rest of our days!
I am over this bizarre way of living my life! Are you yet?
It’s taken decades to recognize that not succeeding at goals is not a failure but instead can be a learning experience if you choose to see it that way, and the learning becomes a stepping stone to better actions to reach the goal eventually.
FIRST, THINK ABOUT THIS:
What if the carrots we set dangling before us are NOT the best for us right now, but instead are chosen because of old programming - someone else’s agenda for us; society’s or a family member’s or friend’s or spouse’s choices for what is right for us to pursue; or gender biased pressure?
What if those carrots are just too big and cumbersome for us right now and we want smaller ones to feast on and grow stronger from catching?
What if the carrot isn’t an exciting option to persuade you to put in the big effort to catch it anyways? Maybe something more exciting would be a better motivator for you?
➡️ GENIUS Early life conditioning never leaves you unless you turn a bright light on the old beliefs and start questioning their relevance to your current stage of life and desires for your future.
Some of those early beliefs are truly stale, and no longer valuable to growth as a grown-ass adult! Often, they need rewriting or removal altogether, being replaced with those that now serve your best chance at growing into your greatest vision of yourself.
I think this belief-wrangling becomes more top of mind in late perimenopause for many women.
Midlife hormonal shifts trigger this GENIUS menopausal mental dance with old beliefs.
For me, I’ve experimented a lot over the last few years with different ways to set up goals that make more sense for my current sense of self and who I want to be. It’s led to a great deal of belief reshaping, separation from family beliefs, and discovering new ideas I hadn’t known were possible for me before looking for them.
💙 This allowed my goals; my aspirations; my expectations of achievement, to dramatically change too, leading to me redefining what carrots I was willing to invest my precious energy in as I age so that I age with more grace and health.
My invitation to you, my friend, is to take the next 5-10 minutes and start asking yourself the following:
WHY are you chasing whatever big and small goals you have on your list of to-do’s?
DO the goals speak to your deepest authentic self or are they fulfilling another’s desires for you that no longer resonate with you?
WHO would benefit most from you succeeding or maybe NOT succeeding in reaching these goals?
WHAT would happen if you changed up your goals?
And ARE you willing to make changes in order to receive the changes you truly wish to see in your life from now on?
I SAY THIS TO PATIENTS DAILY – What got you HERE today needs to be thanked! But, those same beliefs can’t get you to a very different future unless you change some or many of them.
We must change to get the changes we want to experience.
And this can feel incredibly uncomfortable for ourselves and those around us – at least for a while.
But, we adapt quickly and so do the people closest to us, who would be influenced by our changes.
WHAT ARE YOUR CARROTS?
🥕Are they ones you KNOW you can achieve?
🥕Are they ones you genuinely DESIRE?
🥕WHAT do you have to give up to actually achieve them?
🥕ARE you willing to do what’s needed to achieve them?
AND THEN, once you catch up to your goals – your carrots – do you just move on to yet another goal, disregarding the effort that went into reaching the carrot in the first place?
Or can you learn to PAUSE and CELEBRATE that you got the carrot?
PAUSE to reflect on the awesomeness of actually reaching a coveted goal – what it took to get there, what beliefs helped you succeed, and whether or not having this carrot lives up to the hype you created around it.
We so rarely celebrate our wins. And I believe this is part of the problem with self esteem – we aren’t acknowledging ourselves for doing what we say we deeply want to do; for getting what we work for. We tend to rely on outside applause for our wins.
But, my friend, no one, and I really mean no one, knows what truly motivates you to strive for your dreams, nor fully can understand the relevance of catching the carrots!
You must applaud yourself and have that mean more than any outside recognition.
And this is a learned skill worth dangling as a carrot on a stick to achieve!
LET ME HELP YOU WITH THIS SO THAT YOU CAN...
*finally set goals that are truly meaningful to where you are in your life right now, who you currently are, and where you desire to get to
*and redefine the ideas of goals, and help you collapse the timeline from where you are to where you want to be so it’s quick reaching those carrots and eating them!
I recorded a beautiful 2 hour workshop called THE DESIGN YOUR STUNNING LIFE WORKSHOP that teaches you the difference between ENDS Goals and MEANS Goals. Along with a workbook that shows you exactly how to decide upon and then design a few appropriate goals in the 12 areas of your life. There is a Tree of Life goal sheet you can print with your goals for reminders that can keep you motivated – like a small vision board!
💃If you are a woman preparing for or are already experiencing perimenopause or post-menopause, I’d love for you to join my private Facebook women’s group, The EASY YOUniversity, where you’ll receive FREE access to THE DESIGN YOUR STUNNING LIFE WORKSHOP.
Or you can simply purchase the WORKSHOP today and start your journey of redefining your carrots and living the life you actually desire, interrupting the self sabotage.
Either way, I offer this information to you right now because there’s no time like the present to reevaluate your choices and re-orient yourself to your greatness. And, my friend, it’s WAY easier with support!
Well, I don’t know about you, but I’m excited about my ability to achieve my chosen goals these days and this September, I’ll be revisiting my own DESIGN YOUR STUNNING LIFE Workbook with its Tree of Life goal board and setting myself up for more success this year.
If you have any questions about the WORKSHOP, you can CONTACT us anytime.
Let’s be like Bugs Bunny who always got his carrot 🥕
Hugs,
Dr. Krista
DrAc, IFMCP
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