How to Scale Back Without Giving Up on Your Goals

You can listen to the full episode here: Listen to Ep 28: How to Scale Back Without Giving Up on Your Goals

Big dreams are exciting, but they can also become overwhelming when we try to do everything at once. Sometimes the most supportive thing we can do is scale a project back to its most essential form so it can actually begin.

In this episode of Anchored & Alive, Blaze explores how keeping things smaller can create stronger, more sustainable growth. Through the example of a garden project, this conversation looks at capacity, commitment, and the value of building something meaningful in ways that your real life can actually support.

🌿 In this episode we explore:

• why large visions often need a much smaller starting point
• how to identify the essence of what you really want
• why overcommitting creates stress, panic, and burnout
• how to treat projects as experiments rather than all-or-nothing commitments
• why scaling back can actually support long-term growth
• how to make room for joy and sustainability in the process

Hello everybody. This week we're going to talk about keeping things small even though we want everything to be huge. I want to talk about the garden project because I think this is my big illustrating example of how I'm choosing to prune things back so that eventually things can be big.

In my life, I plan gloriously huge, complicated, like so complicated, ideas and ways that I want to do things and I think of like the most longest lasting, most epic, like if I lived in Victorian times and was an heiress to a fortune, how I would build things.

And then I realized that I'm actually just living my life and it's a really good life, but I'm not a rich heiress from another era.

And I don't have infinite funds, and I don't have infinite time, and I don't have infinite energy, and I can't hire a posse of people to come do everything for me.

So what I'm left with is me and just my desire being the engine for the things that happen in my life.

I probably think that most of you listening to this feel much the same way, like when it comes down to it.

It's you. You are the engine for everything that's happening in your life.

While we all have big dreams. We want our dreams to happen and then we want them to last. We don't want them to just get crushed.

We don't want them destroyed. And one of the ways that I think we can serve ourselves really better is to not keep our expectations reasonable. I don't want to say that because I like having unreasonable expectations and I like dreaming big.

But I think it's to look at what the big dream is and find the essence of that, and go, "Okay, what is the thing that I really want or need from this? What is it that I'm trying to express about myself or to the world or through this project, what is it that I'm hoping to get?

And distill it down to its most essential parts.

With the Garden project, for me, I distilled it down to independence, actually, as me expressing my own independence and being able to build something that I want to build.

The other essence of it is I really love working with nature and with my hands in the dirt and I love tending to plants and I want to see something beautiful. Again, that's mine. It's so tied into the like, "I want this for me."

It's like my nervous system regulation and emotional regulation spot. So those were the essential elements of what I wanted to create.

Now when I talked about this the first time back in February, it was all about this grandiose plan of like nine 8' X 8' hexes that were huge, like filled with dirt and had so many vegetables growing that I could feed an army and it would like feed my whole family for the whole year and there'd be canning and harvesting and crop rotation and pest control and all this stuff.

And we're talking like raised garden beds where I'd have to like dig into the earth and like make like very precise measurements and make sure that the mower can get in between each of them and it was complicated and difficult and glorious. I have to say, like I loved dreaming about it.

And then I went, "Okay, to fulfill this entire project to make the whole thing happen right now would take a small fortune that I don't have."

It would take an awful lot of effort that I don't think I'm actually realistically going to have. Now that I'm actually living in the time, of course I'm not going to have that much time.

I just don't. Because again, I'm a human living a real life with actual obligations and work to do. And I can't only be a gardener or only be an architect. I have to do other things.

So then I look at it and go, "Okay, could I make it smaller and still hold true to what I really want? And could I scaffold it so that it might be able to begin big, it might be able to dig into the big thing. It might be able to build into the bigger vision that I have over a little bit more time.

And I'm talking about stretching this out over a few years so that each digging project time gets a little bit more manageable. The outlay of expense goes out early, but not for the whole thing. There's time for me to just decide how well things are going and if I need to expand or get smaller.

And that is what's allowing this project to be able to thrive, I think, and be able to start to exist.

So plants are starting to grow now, the digging of the actual trenches,

All of that needs to come together in a way that allows my life to still continue. I wanted to share that because I think that it's important for us to be aware of what our capacity is when we're pushing on these projects.

So this might be the time where you're starting to get an inkling of where you've overcommitted to some stuff.

Or where you want to pull back some of your energy. And I think when we feel like we've overcommitted, there's this sense of panic that starts to build where you're like, "Oh no, I wanted to do this. I said I was gonna do this. Here it is happening and now I've decided that I've changed my mind."

And we have a lot of stigma around that where we don't wanna be the person who changes our mind. We don't wanna be fickle. We don't wanna be difficult or hard to deal with or whatever.

It is okay, particularly right now, to go, "If I continue down this course at this particular velocity with this many commitments, I know I'm not going to make it. There must be sacrifices."

So what probably is going to happen for me?

Over the next few weeks is a little bit of sacrificing, realizing that some of the plants that I wanted to plant, maybe they're not going to live.

Some of them might be thriving and some of them might not be. And I'm going to need to kind of adjust the plan according to what exists, and also according to how much energy and time I realistically have.

I'm not living in a vacuum. A lot of other things are going to happen that will take my time and effort and attention away.

Here's what I also want to say is sometimes, particularly with the garden project, it's time intensive and it's kind of seasonal intensive, right?

Like there's the planting and the planting that happens in Spring.

However, when you're first starting something, a very new project, it's not only that, it's laying the architecture and it's establishing habits and it's establishing patterns that can carry me through later but haven't happened yet.

So the beginning of any new project costs you a lot more than it will once it's already running.

I'm more aware of that now than I was earlier in life. We used to do crazy things and be like, "Let's have an orchard and plant 40 trees, and it's too many trees." And it was hard, and we had to call in all of our friends, and still not everything lived, because we overcommitted and we got too excited, and it wasn't what we really wanted to have happen.

I'd like to think I'm a little bit wiser now. I still overextend, but hopefully not to that degree.

And I'm allowing myself some wiggle room to go, "How about just this one? What if I get this right and it goes well then I can replicate it again next year?" Realizing that again, there'll be a big outlay of energy.

But it'll allow me to duplicate it easier knowing what I'm doing from this year.

So all of your effort isn't lost. Every time you go and do something, you're learning from it.

I take my own advice here and I congratulate myself a lot on what went right or what I've learned even when something went wrong.

So when I buy the wrong material or set something up and hurt myself or something strange happens,

I go through the being pissed off and hurt and angry and sad and all of the emotions that happen around it.

And then I think myself and go, "Great, I know what not to do next time." Or, "I'm never going to do that again." Or, "I'm not going to work with that vendor." Or, "Whatever it is, that happens."

I like approaching it that way where I have some gratitude towards anything that happened if it goes wrong because it helps me end on a note that feels better in my body. There's something about finding the thing to be grateful for that I am genuinely grateful for and I have to say that's an important part of this is it has to be something I'm genuinely going to be pleased about. When I do that...

It helps me look for that more than looking for what went wrong.

And it helps me to wake up thinking about all the things that I am appreciating that are going well and that I'm enjoying.

So right now I'm really looking forward to what's going to happen when I can have like plants that are alive and good and out there and able to live out in the dirt that I haven't gotten yet for outside. I'm very excited about it. I think it's going to be beautiful and wonderful and a fun experience.

And it's interesting also I want to share how the... the fierceness with which I wanted to protect this project earlier in the year where I was very adamant it needs to be only mine and I don't want to share and it has to be me is starting to adjust and change as the year is moving and I thought that was really interesting.

But I want to share it because I'm not surprised.

I think this is a natural flow, that when I honor what I really wanted, which is to be left alone and do things on my own, it allows me to have that experience and then move into another one.

Without resentment, without feeling like it's terrible if someone comes and wants to help me transplant my plants or put something in the wrong spot. I feel like I'm a lot more open and accepting of what's happening.

And it's because I've given myself lots of opportunities to make the decisions myself that were important to me and set myself up for all of that.

And I think it's important to talk about that because sometimes we gloss over that aspect and we don't give as much credit to ourselves in our ability to be satisfied.

I guess with putting up a boundary or saying that we need something respected. When you do that, you've given yourself a bigger gift than you think.

Because you not only get to have what you put the boundary up about, right, and you get that experience, but you get to relax and go, "Okay, now I don't need that boundary as much anymore."

I know that people will respect it when I say, "Hey, it's mine back off." So now I can choose to let someone in.

And they know that when I tell them to not be in there, they'll back off and it's not a big deal. So I think...

That's been a really beautiful continuation of that whole thought process and experience of learning to set boundaries and talk about my projects in the way that I wanted to and share them in the way that I wanted to. So, putting that out there.

Let's turn it back to you. I'm curious what your feeling is right now in this moment.

Do you feel like your projects are overwhelming you or that you've set yourself up too big or that comfortable with the scale of what you're working on?

And if you find that things seem big or like they might take more from you than you have at the moment,

What kind of adjustments might you be willing or capable of making right now that could take a little off your plate or help things still happen, but in a way that's a little bit more supportive to you?

So I think of this as like thinning out seedlings or deciding that you're gonna stop crowding yourself so that it's too hard to do, like you want to make some space and make some time, make some room for everything to grow well.

Could you remove an unnecessary commitment this week, or could you find something that seemed really important to this project that might not be as important as you thought, or might be for a much farther down the road section of your idea?

For me, with the Gardening project, it was removing all of the hexes and saying, "I'm only going to do one, and I want to... I don't even know that I'm going to plant everything that I could plant in there."

It's an experiment this year. And I also think when I approach anything as an experiment rather than a permanent thing it helps me feel a lot better about experimenting in whatever outcome happens, I can be okay with it because I realize that nothing is permanent and it's all adjustable.

So while my vision for myself is to have this permanent, really wonderful perennial and annual garden bed that will feed my family or provide us teas and maybe medicines and all these wonderful things, for years to come,

That's great. That's like what I want 60- and 70-year-old me to be able to do is to just like go out and garden all day long and have a great time.

But right now, I'm 47-year-old me, and I've got a lot going on and I don't have that much time, and I can't do all of it.

And so this is what makes sense. And I know that I can upgrade later and I can make things better and I can enhance them.

But I don't need to do it all today. Today, I just need to make sure that my seedlings got enough water and that...

They're warm enough overnight that they're good. One thing at a time, breaking it down into small doable parts and seeing what I'm enjoying, seeing what's actually growing the easiest without too much effort from me. I'm always on the lookout for that. Like what?

What really felt the vibe and wanted to do it anyway? Like I love helping that and kind of putting my efforts in with that. And then of course I'm going to have one seedling that I'll be like,

"Please baby you can do it! I know I want you to come be in this world, please make it." And hopefully I'll be able to make all of these little seedlings take off and see what happens.

At this point, it's a waiting game and it's me just being present for what is really happening.

And I think that's where we all are right now is trying to balance the confidence, the overconfidence of everything that we've got going and recognizing that soon it'll be summer and the energy that we have right now.

We'll move into more of a maintenance phase. So be aware of that. In May, energy is still rising, we still have a lot of it.

We're heading towards June and the solstice and this height of energy.

And then after that, it's like all downhill. What's interesting is after that, the whole like Northern Hemisphere will be moving towards quiet and stillness and harvest and all that, but it's kind of coasting on the energy that we're building right now.

We won't feel it right away. We'll still feel like we have a ton of energy in June and July, but it's actually starting to reduce. So now is the time of harnessing all of that energy, but being realistic about how much you're going to maintain in another few months.

If you can look at it that way, it's a lot easier to pull back commitments and be like, "Oh, okay, I don't want to over-invest. I actually want to enjoy my experience this summer."

I don't want to be burnt out and stressed out and feel like I did too many things. I want to just really enjoy a couple of things.

This is also the time where I start thinking, "Okay, what do I really want to enjoy this summer? And where am I going to make some space for that?" Because again, my planning brain is on and I'm like, "Okay, I definitely want to go to the zoo and I want to go to the botanical gardens and I want to have made this sewing project. I've got like this awesome dress that I can wear when I go to the gardens. It's going to be great."

All of the energy is there and that's all great. But I'm trying to really set myself up for highlights, like one major fun thing each month that I can really enjoy instead of trying to...

I don't know, quote unquote, "maximize everything" because that is too exhausting. I don't want to be exhausted. I just want to have fun.

So my friends, I am sending you all a big hug and wishing all of your projects amazing success.

And also in solidarity saying it's cool if we want to pull back a little bit and just focus on what we're focusing on in a way that feels really sustainable and nice right now. Mm, it feels really good.

Have an excellent week and I will see you next time when we'll talk about what's worth carrying forward into the summer and how we're gonna nurture all of these things that we've been building.

Have an awesome time and I'll see you then.

Before you go, I wanted to let you know that I'll be holding a live summer solstice gathering on June 24th.

If you're feeling the shift in energy already and you want a space to move through it with support, you're very welcome to join us.

You can find the details on my website.

🌿 Related Episodes

Continue exploring this spring series on sustainable growth, self-trust, and building a life that supports you:

🌿 The Discipline of Self-Trust: How to Build a Life That Supports You
How self-trust grows through supportive routines, preparation, and the evidence of your own life.

🌿 How to Use Spring Energy Without Burning Out
Why rising energy doesn’t have to mean urgency, and how to create momentum without exhausting yourself.

🌿 The Urge to Reinvent Yourself in Spring — And How to Change Without Burning Out
How to experiment with change and expansion without overwhelming yourself.

🌿 Why Setting Boundaries Feels So Uncomfortable at First
How boundaries protect what matters and create the space your projects need to grow.

🌿 Start Living in Rhythm with Your Energy

If you’re noticing how your motivation, capacity, and emotions shift through the seasons, the Living in Rhythm Starter Kit can help you work with those rhythms instead of fighting them.

Inside the free guide you’ll find tools to help you:

• understand your energy patterns
• reduce overwhelm and burnout
• create more supportive routines
• build momentum in ways that actually fit your life

Download the free guide here.

🌿 Join the Summer Solstice Gathering

If you’re feeling the shift into summer and want a space to move through it with support, I’ll be holding a live Summer Solstice Gathering on June 24th.

It’s a gentle, real-time space to reflect, reset, and work with this transition in a more grounded way.

Explore the details and join us here.