Beyond the Goal Posts: Let Your Breath Lead | Soul Led Living

Jul 2

7 min read

Updated: 3 days ago

An invitation to soften the hustle, trust the side journeys, and breathe life into your becoming. Soul Led Living

This is Part II of The Breath Spiral Method™ Series. You can read Part I here.

Goddess formed within a tree trunk, with cascading pink branches, spreading roots, and an aquamarine breath spiral beneath “Beyond the Goal Posts: Let Your Breath Lead.”

Something in me has changed. Something has shifted at a soul level. As someone who spent her whole life hustling to “crush” the goals, I am now finding myself resistant to the very idea of hustle as a currency in my life. I only just realized how deeply this has shifted in me.

This week, I saw an influencer ask how everyone was doing with their “goals for 2026.” Then he asked who was ready to “crush their goals” in the final half of the year.

Normally, I love the inspiration that comes from this particular person. I believe his heart is in the right place, and I understand the intention behind encouraging people to keep going, stay focused, and believe in what they are building. But in that moment, something in my body immediately pulled back.

It was not his message itself. It was the energy underneath it.

There was something in the phrase “crush your goals” that felt heavy to me. Forceful. Masculine in the old-world sense. Not masculine as in sacred structure, strength, or devotion, but masculine as in push harder, do more, chase faster, prove yourself, achieve your way into worth.

And my body said no.

Not in anger. Not in judgment. Just in recognition. I wrote an article recently about joy and how we must redefine joy after grief and the trying journey of unweaving trauma. We change as we move through this life, and as we change, so too must our foundational beliefs. I now realize we also need to redefine our connection to work, hustle, and goals, because those are huge factors in how we define joy.

I have become more aware of how much of our world is still built around striving. We are praised for chasing. Celebrated for hustling. Applauded for overextending ourselves in the name of accomplishment.

We are taught to set the goal, make the plan, control the path, and measure our success by how much we were able to conquer.

But what is this costing us? How is this affecting our breath, our body, and the way we actually live in the quiet moments that are not goal-focused?

A few years ago, I suffered from a nervous breakdown because of this very mentality: reach that goal at all costs because the payoff will feel so good. Now, within my work as a Soul Guide, I hear similar stories from the women who share their unfolding with me. Women, in particular, are trying to “have it all,” and this often comes at the expense of their own breath, sometimes literally.

As a collective, somewhere along the way, many of us stopped asking whether the things we are chasing are actually aligned with our breath.

We have become so focused on goals, getting there, doing more, and proving ourselves that we have lost track of something deeply sacred. Life, true life, is lived, breathed, and felt between the goal posts, not only at the goal post itself.

Most people are not actually seeking the goal. They are seeking the feeling that comes when the goal is reached. They are seeking the dopamine hit, the relief, the celebration, the moment where all the striving finally feels like it paid off.

The vacation. The launch. The number. The milestone. The achievement. The thing that says, “See, I did it. I made it. I am worthy now.”

And yes, those moments can feel beautiful. They can feel expansive. They can feel validating. But I have started to wonder how much of that feeling is true joy, and how much of it is simply the release that comes after we have been holding ourselves in tension for so long.

I commented on his post and said that I no longer set goals in the same way. I follow my breath, trust where it is taking me, and allow the path to unfold organically.

Some people found joy in that. Others laughed.

That is okay. Life is perception, and I honor everyone’s right to see through their own lens. But the exchange stayed with me because it brought up a deeper question.

Most of us do not know how to live without goal posts.

What would life even look like without them?

For so long, goal posts have been how many of us identify success. They are how we decide whether we are doing okay. They are how we measure progress, worth, discipline, purpose, and even joy. And yet, I believe they are also one of the things quietly robbing many of us of the very joy we are trying so hard to reach.

Because once a goal has been set, the mind often begins to grip. We start trying to control the timeline, the people, the circumstances, the route, and the outcome. We become so focused on the goal as we envisioned it that we can miss the unexpected openings along the way.

And sometimes those openings are the real journey.

There have been many times in my life when I thought I was moving toward one thing, only to be led into a side journey that became far more important than the original destination. Those side journeys taught me something about myself that the goal could not have taught me. They opened creative doors I did not know existed. They brought people into my life I never would have met if I had stayed tightly attached to the roadmap.

Some of the most meaningful relationships, creative awakenings, and soul-shaping experiences of my life happened because I allowed the path to breathe.

They happened because I stopped forcing the straight line and allowed the spiral to show me something unexpected.

So now I find myself asking:

What happens when we let the side journey become the journey?

Within The Breath Spiral Method™, this is where breath becomes the guide. This focuses on Soul led living. Once the rigid roadmap begins to soften, we have the opportunity to come into alignment with our breath. Once we come into alignment with our breath, we begin to hear our intuition with a clearer signal.

Having dreams matters. Vision matters. Inspiration matters. I am not saying we should move through life without direction, desire, or devotion. But I do believe we need to become more honest about the energy we are creating from.

Soul Led Living

Are we creating from pressure or presence?

Are we creating from fear or breath?

Are we creating because our soul is leading us, or because the world told us we are falling behind?

A goal often requires planning, control, and hustle.

Aligned living requires breath, harmony, and trust.

When we move toward a dream through breath, the experience that unfolds often carries peace. It carries joy. It creates a foundation we can actually live inside. But when we reach something through hustle, force, and constant striving, the joy can be short-lived. The high fades. The celebration ends. And then we are left looking for the next thing to chase.

Another goal. Another mountain. Another finish line.

This is how we become addicted to becoming, while forgetting how to be.

If everything meant for us can meet us naturally and organically through our breath, why do we hustle so hard? Why do we choose the path of force when the body is already trying to communicate with us? Why do we keep pushing past our inner knowing in order to satisfy a world that profits from our exhaustion?

Maybe instead of asking, “What goals am I crushing this year?” we can begin asking different questions.

Where does my breath want to take me today?What does my soul want to express today?Where does my body feel most harmonically balanced, stable, and alive?What would my life look like if I stopped building from pressure and started creating from peace?

These questions do not remove purpose. They deepen it.

They allow room for side journeys, growth, intuitive redirection, and true soul-led purpose to unfold. They invite us to notice the difference between what is coming from our breath as intuition and what is coming from the world as pressure to achieve.

Does this mean we should never work toward anything? Of course not. We all have dreams. We all have desires. We all have visions that call us forward.

But how much more enjoyable would the path become if we allowed our breath to lead us there? How much more meaningful would life feel if we stopped believing the goal post was the most important part and started honoring the journey as the place where the actual living happens?

The journey is where we learn. It is where we grow. It is where we find inventive ways to navigate the path. It is where we meet friendships, relationships, opportunities, and unexpected joy. It is where life touches us, shapes us, and shows us who we are becoming.

If we move through life constantly trying to crush our goals, we become so busy in the act of accomplishment that we lose the art of soul living. And I believe many of us are being invited out of that now.

There is a new earth emerging, and its frequency is not built on hustle. It is built on love, creativity, breath, harmony, and coherence. It does not ask us to abandon our dreams. It asks us to stop strangling them with control.

It asks us to create differently.

To breathe first.

To listen deeper.

To trust the spiral.

To allow the path to reveal itself instead of forcing every step to match the map we made from fear.

One of my favorite quotes, shared by Sir Robert Edward Grant, says, “We are moving into a world of more human being and less human doing.”

I love this because it brings me back to center. Who do I want to express as my being if I am no longer defined by what I do? Who am I when I am not chasing, proving, striving, or performing? What wants to live through me when I stop gripping the outcome and begin listening to my breath?