By: Melissa “Dr. Mel” Robinson-Brown | Founder & CEO | Senior Psychologist
“So,” I said to my therapist, in almost the exact same tone I use every single year around this time, “the alarm bells are going off again.”
She didn’t even ask which alarm bells. She already knew.
Because if you’ve felt that specific late-August, early-September gut-drop — the one that hits right after the kids go back to school and your out-of-office stops bouncing back — you already know.
Summer’s dead.
The vacation pics are three scrolls down now. And somewhere in your brain, some smug little voice goes: oh hey, remember—It’s about to be Q4! Think about all that stuff you said you wanted this year for your life. . . Did you do it or has it been another “wasted” year?
That’s workplace stress, life stress, frustration, and everything in between showing up before you’ve even opened your laptop. So damn annoying! 🙄
This is the second New Year, and unlike the one in January, nobody’s popping champagne for this one. This is the one where you pull up the goals doc from January — the promotion, the raise, the “I’m not going to work through lunch anymore” — and start doing math on how many weeks you have left.
And the math is never kind.
You know the exact moment. It’s 9:47pm, you swore you’d be asleep by ten, and instead you’re propped up in bed doom-scrolling your own goals doc, staring at bullet points you haven’t touched since February like they personally wronged you. Or it’s Sunday, you’re supposed to be watching your kid’s soccer game, and half your brain is already at Monday’s calendar doing silent math on how many weeks of Q4 are left before your review.
Your body is treating a missed KPI like a bear in the woods. If you’ve ever typed how to manage work stress into a search bar at midnight, this one’s for you.
Most of Our “Goals” Were Never Goals. They Were Vibes.
“I want to get promoted this year.” “I want to be seen as a leader.” “I want actual work-life balance for once, God, please.” Say it out loud and it sounds great. “Manifest that sh&t” as the girlies say. Sounds like a vision board.
But it’s not a plan. 😳
A goal with no plan is just a wish wearing a really cute blazer.
And when September shows up and you’re still not a VP, your brain doesn’t go “huh, guess I never built a plan for that.” It goes straight to “I’m just not where I want to be and I can’t seem to figure it out.”
We say the pretty, vague version out loud, do zero logistics, and then act personally betrayed when the universe doesn’t handle the details for us. Girl…..It was never going to. That gap between the goal and the plan is exactly where goal-setting anxiety lives.
So, before you spiral into full performance pressure meltdown about everything you haven’t hit — did you ever actually build a plan? Or did you just say the shiny version out loud one time in January and call it a strategy?
Stop Obsessing Over Outcomes. Start Counting Inputs.
This is the one I actually use, and it’s what I say A LOT to the high-achieving women with whom I work. We are obsessed with outcomes — did I get the promotion, did I hit the number, did anyone notice how hard I’m grinding — but outcomes are only half yours to control.
Inputs are entirely yours. Inputs are the real scoreboard.
So, skip “did I get promoted” and ask:
How many times did I actually raise my hand for the stretch project?
How many times did I ask my manager for real feedback instead of just guessing what she thinks of me?
How many times did I say the good idea out loud in the meeting instead of typing it into a sticky note and letting someone else say it first?
How many times did I advocate for myself when staying quiet would have been so much easier?
Raise your hand ten times and get picked zero, and that’s still ten times more proof of growth than sitting pretty and waiting to be chosen. If you want the promotion and haven’t asked one single question about what it actually requires or created a concrete plan with your boss, of course it hasn’t happened.
You have to be an active participant in these goals. Not just hope it happens.
Your Nervous System Thinks Q4 Is a Bear
Work anxiety doesn’t just live in your head — it’s in your shoulders, your jaw, your stomach at 11pm doing math about how many weeks are left in the quarter. That tightness, that itch to fix everything right now — that’s fight-or-flight, activated, because your body believes missing an arbitrary year-end number is a threat to your survival.
It’s not. Missing 20% more revenue this year will not kill you. Not making VP this exact calendar cycle will not kill you. Unless we’re talking rent-and-groceries-on-the-line territory, your nervous system has confused “disappointing” with “dangerous,” and somebody’s got to be the adult in the room and tell it that.
So, when the Q4 planning stress creeps in, say it out loud if you must: I am safe. This is disappointing, not dangerous. My body does not need to sound the alarm right now.
Let your body stand down enough to actually think, instead of white knuckling your way through over functioning at work until you combust.
When Over Functioning Becomes the Backup Plan
I see this constantly in my practice, and I’ve done it myself, plenty: you clock that you’re behind, panic kicks in, and instead of slowing down to build an actual plan, you floor it.
You say yes to the extra project nobody asked you to take. You skip lunch again. You’re answering emails at 10pm because at least it feels like progress. You call it discipline.
But it’s actually over functioning at work, and your nervous system is trying to outrun a feeling instead of just sitting with it for five minutes.
This is how work burnout gets built. Not one brutal week — months of torching your sleep, your boundaries, your work-life balance, trying to “make up time,” using up the very resources that would actually let you think clearly enough to close the gap.
Working harder is not the same as working toward something.
Half the time it’s just a very expensive way of avoiding the fifteen minutes it’d take to sit down and figure out what actually needs to change. Underneath all of it, this whole thing is stress management at work dressed up as a productivity problem.
If your gut reaction right now is to grind harder — ask yourself if that’s moving you toward a plan, or if it’s just noise to make the anxiety shut up for an hour.
Start the Wins List You Wanted to Start in January
Keep a running wins list. Not your greatest-hits reel — a real, unglamorous list of every time you did something differently than you would have a year ago.
I’ll go first. A year ago, I didn’t know the first thing about pitching anything. It scared me and I figured it wasn’t for me. Until I got thrust into it on accident one time last year. This year I did it three separate times and made it past the first round twice. Even won some money and still in the running for the 3rd one. That’s not “meh, still haven’t won the big one.” That’s proof of movement, and I’ll take it.
But if you’ll let me be honest, that’s not always easy. Accepting inputs as growth requires intentionality.
Maybe yours is smaller and still counts.
You held a boundary around email after 6pm most of the time. You asked for help instead of quietly drowning. You said no to a meeting that didn’t need you. You went to therapy instead of white knuckling another rough month alone.
None of that’s on a performance review. All of its proof you’re not standing still.
Start the list today. Not New Year’s — today. Our brains are wired to only register the big flashy wins and completely ignore the slow, unglamorous accumulation of them, which is exactly why September feels like such a punch in the gut.
A Little Grace Before You Go Back to Grinding
I already know some of you are about to turn “track your inputs” into a brand-new exhausting system to optimize. I see you. Please, for the love of all that is beautiful in you, don’t do that.
That’s not the assignment.
The assignment is to stop treating every unmet January goal as a personal failure and start treating this fall like an honest check-in instead of a trial with you as the defendant.
You’re allowed to be disappointed with a goal that didn’t pan out and acknowledge everything else that grew this year. Both are true. You’re allowed to want more out of Q4 without treating yourself like a project that’s fallen behind schedule.
So, before you build your Q4 plan, or set one more target, or open another spreadsheet — take a minute and notice what’s actually true.
You made it through some hard stuff this year. You showed up in ways you’re not giving yourself an ounce of credit for. The alarm bells don’t mean you failed. Sometimes they just mean it’s September — and it’s time to be honest with yourself, not brutal.
Need help shifting this mindset? We got you! Schedule a consultation call with us and let us be your guide on this next chapter of your journey.
