In this opening episode of the Mind Body Space Podcast, Dr. Juna Bobby (MD, lifestyle‑medicine specialist) and organizational psychologist Fiona Murden discuss why traditional New Year’s resolutions often fail and how to set goals that align with personal purpose and the brain’s wiring. They explain that habit change requires more than daily systems; it needs a clear, motivating purpose that serves as a mental ‘compass’ or North Star. Drawing on neuroscience, they describe how working memory must hold one’s purpose throughout the day to override automatic habits, and they reference research on goal‑directed behavior that shows abstract goals must be broken into concrete sub‑goals. The conversation introduces a “zoom‑out/zoom‑in” framework: first envision a broad, meaningful outcome (the zoom‑out), then translate it into specific, actionable steps (the zoom‑in). They suggest practical tools such as the 5‑Why technique, vision boards, and making goals specific (e.g., “be more empathic” becomes “use empathy when stressed”). The hosts stress that purpose can evolve, need not be grand, and should be enjoyable rather than judged as superficial. They also explore external influences—parental expectations, societal pressure, and professional norms—that can shape or distort goal setting, especially for teenagers whose frontal lobes are still developing. Visualization is highlighted as a way to give the brain a concrete target, allowing subconscious attention to prioritize relevant cues. Throughout, Fiona shares coaching anecdotes for leaders, students, and teens, emphasizing flexibility, hope, and the importance of aligning goals with what excites and motivates the individual.
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In our fast-paced world, we're often so focused on results that we forget how much our productivity and performance depend on our mental and physical wellness. Welcome to the Mind Body Space Podcast, where I talk to experts and share evidence-based actionable tools you can use to reach your highest potential. I'm your host, Dr. Juna Bobby MD. I'm a mom and an MD, board certified in radiology and lifestyle medicine. I've dedicated my career to teaching the science of resilience for peak performance. In this episode, my awesome friend Fiona Murden joins me to share her expertise on human performance. Fi is an award-winning author and Chartered UK Organizational Psychologist who works with top-level executives and leaders. This is part 1 of the conversation Fi and I had about setting and achieving goals, how to figure out what our unique goals are, and how to motivate ourselves to actually change and move towards our goals.
Good morning, Bee. Happy New Year.
Happy New Year. Good afternoon from the UK. Good morning to you in Westchester.
I'm so excited for this new year. I can't believe you've been with me for a year now. This is amazing. So excited.
Actually, that's really cool. We should be celebrating that.
So today we're going to talk about goals. Of course, it's New Year's, so traditionally people talk about resolutions as if the clock turns midnight and our brains just have an on and off switch and we program ourselves to do instant changes into the person that we want to be, right? Which you and I both know that doesn't work that way.
If only it did.
Yeah. So I see people are shying away now from even talking about goal setting. So everybody's saying, let's not set New Year's resolutions, let's just set New Year's systems and, you know, how we do things on a daily basis and habits. And that's all great. But when it comes to the neuroscience of change, it's rather a tough thing to do, right? To go against what we know, go against our habits, starting something new and suppressing our reaction. That takes a lot of brainpower to actually suppress our habitual reactions to something we would be doing automatically in the past. So it does.
And I also would say that it takes the context away. So when you're only looking at a habit in isolation, you're not looking at the context that you live in. You're not looking at who you are and what patterns you've already built up. And you're also not looking at where you want to go necessarily. You need to have— like you've described it to me before, is this zoom in, zoom out, because you need to be able to zoom out and see, well, where do I want to go? What's What is purposeful and meaningful for me? And those are the things that keep you motivated to make those tough changes, to change those habits, to keep going with things.
Yes. And absolutely. So the purpose, like having that sort of purpose, whether it's a purpose for life or, you know, a purpose for that time being right now, my purpose is to start with a green juice every morning because my purpose is health.
I feel really bad. I'm sat here drinking Coke Zero and you're drinking a nice healthy smoothie.
I saw they have a coffee Coke Zero now, so I might be trying one of those. But so when we talk about goals and purpose, so my purpose is being healthy, so I started drinking this green juice every day. When we talk about goals, it's also about suppression, and that's the hard part for the brain. For the brain itself, it's about holding memory. So you have to have this cognitive processing. You need to be able to hold that memory in your brain of what you want for yourself. So it's called working memory. We need to keep it in our working memory as we go through the day and as we are, uh, tempted by things that are easier to do. So setting these goals and having this purpose is so important cuz our memories are very short-term, as we all know. In the morning, we remember we want to be healthy. 4 o'clock comes, I'm like, no, I don't care about being healthy. I just want to lie here. So our memories are very short, even throughout the day with our circadian rhythms, our moods change, our emotions change. So we need that sort of anchor to hold us together. And that's where these goals come in and the purpose. And for me, the purpose, I usually call it with my students, I refer to it as a compass. Or a North Star that's always there for you to come back to, right? And oftentimes we don't think about that first thing in the morning. We don't wake up and say, oh, my goal is to live a long and healthy life so I can, you know, um, be vital and, and spend time with my loved ones. You don't think about that every single morning. You're just like trying to get out of the house. So it's rather tough. And that's where, um, I was hoping we can discuss how to get to the bottom of our purpose. And I've heard of the method of 5 Whys. I don't know if you're familiar with that, where you ask somebody why 5 times and you get to the bottom of something. Okay. Or maybe you have a different method that we could talk about to quickly, you know, get to our purpose. And it doesn't have to be something monumental. It could be something that you're just working towards and you can always change it.
I think that's a really important thing is you can always change it because there is actually research that suggests when people try too hard to find what their bigger purpose is, they can become depressed. Not because it's not— it's not because it's not good for you, because it is immensely powerful understanding your meaning and purpose. It'll help you get through all those tough times. And research shows that as well. But it's this— I can't find the answer— can be very, very stressful and can be quite upsetting. And so it's— sure, it doesn't need to be clear. It doesn't need to be absolutely transparent. So for example, if we're talking about teenagers, my daughter at the moment, she knows she likes sport and physiology. She loves interior design and she's really interested in people. So at the moment she's thinking, well, I quite like to do physiotherapy or I might like to do interior design or I might like to be a psychologist. And she's got a broad idea of what that looks like, and that helps her to motivate herself to look at TikTok— no, to do her revision and what have you. And I think it doesn't have to be, I want to be a doctor, I want to be a lawyer, you know. It can be, I enjoy this area of life and I want to explore it more. Or it could be, I want to live in a big house on the beach. Or it could be also—
don't shy away from something because you think it's superficial, right? Like, I want to live in a big house on a beach. That's, that's fine.
And it's really what feels nice when you think about it. It's what makes you feel a bit excited, maybe a little bit nervous, but in a good way. Um, what sparks you? What makes you feel like, yeah, yeah, what gives you hope? And, and so I would also say don't Yeah, but don't do it when you're really stressed, this exercise, because you're unlikely to be able to see the positive. If you're really stressed, you'll be more like, well, I've got to get this done, and, and there's no point thinking about the bigger picture. And the other, the other final thing I'd say about it, as well as it, you can change it, it's constantly evolving. So I don't know if you've, you know, um, David Attenborough. Do you know him? Yes, yes, I've heard David Attenborough. Yeah, so I guess your students might not have heard of him, but he's He's done a huge amount in broadcasting in the UK for, for the natural world. And if you look at him, he's in his 90s now and he's on talk shows still, and he's, yeah, he's still creating these amazing programs. But if you asked him when he was in his 20s, is that what you want to do when you're 90, he wouldn't have been able to say yes because he wouldn't have known how the world was changing. But the thing that has remained consistent— actually, he's been interviewed by Obama when Obama was in office, so it's a lovely interview between David Attenborough and Obama. But he has always been passionate about the natural world, always.
Mm-hmm.
And so it can be quite foggy and vague, that bit, but that's where the goals then come into it, to create something more defined to work on in the medium term and the shorter term.
Mm-hmm. And I love what you said, just go with what feels like hope for you. That is so powerful to really connect with something that gives you hope, that gets you excited, and don't judge it. Right? Don't say, oh, that's too superficial. Purpose has to be a certain way. Don't have these preconceived notions.
And I think it's really important as well for teenagers to try and— try, and this is really hard— to separate out what your parents want for you and what you want for yourself. Because parents can be a massive influence on taking us down a route that's not actually the thing that makes our heart sing.
What about society also?
Oh yeah, definitely.
Absolutely.
Um, the populations I work with— so surgeons, business leaders, leading professors, all those sorts of people have— not all of them actually, but a lot of them have grown up with the expectation on their shoulders that they become something or do something. But it doesn't make them the happiest people I know, or the most fulfilled people.
There's also a flip side to that, right?
Yeah, exactly.
Where if you ignore your parents or ignore, ignore societal pressures, then you might end up being a little bit too late to things. So that can happen certainly, especially with teenagers who are sort of making those connections between their frontal lobes and the rest of their brain still and trying to learn how to plan things better. And, you know, for example, my husband always says, my dad told me to learn computer science, and I just would refuse. And now he regrets it. And he always wishes that he had learned something about computer science because his dad worked for IBM when it was just starting. So not that my husband regrets being a physician, but you can imagine that he wished he had gotten in on the ground up there. So there's a balance, right? As always, listening to your parents. And sometimes it can be hard, and sometimes, you know, going against what you think you want could be beneficial to you in the, in the future. Sometimes we do have to sacrifice immediate pleasures for things that might be beneficial to us. So in that vein, this neuroscientist Kevin Ochsner and Satpudi at Columbia University, they describe the neuroscience of goal Directed Behavior. And they talk about, you know, it's clear that achieving any of their goals requires a system that can translate abstract goals for a future state. So this future state, this is no easy task, they say. Not only must abstract goals, for example, stopping procrastinating, be translated into intermediate goals and actionable sub-goals. So that's your zoom out and zoom in into smaller goals, right? But typically, these subgoals require behaving in a way that's contrary to our ingrained habits and tendencies. Turning off that reality television until the book chapter is finished, for example. So if we're interested in studying these brain mechanisms, we need to break it down, understand that we have to always have this working memory going back to what our purpose is, what our motivation is, and having that big picture in mind. So that we can come back to the present moment and choose the things that's gonna be helpful for us in the future. So that's where you and I come in. We were gonna work on some how to create these zoom-out goals and then break it down, reverse engineer it into your day-to-day, moment-to-moment. So we just talked about purpose and how to sort of get to something that means something to you and what motivates you. So would you, Fiona, start as a zoom out and start to look at like the year ahead or 6 months ahead if you're talking to a teenager or a young person or anyone for that matter? Or would you zoom out all the way to the end of your life and look back at what could have been, what should have been, you know, using your imagination? How would you start?
You can do that, but I think that's a massive task and it's really hard to do on your own. You might want to play with a vision board or pictures, or there are ways of doing that. I think realistically, if I think about when I'm coaching leaders, mm-hmm, it's about saying, well, where do you want to be in 6 months or a year? What are the things that you want to look different to how they are now? And then how do you get there? And that's the bit I think they were talking about in that paper, is breaking it down into something that's maybe quite esoteric into something that's very pragmatic and actionable. And so, for example, this is a really vague one, but if you were to say to someone, you need to become more empathic, or they said, I would like to become more empathic, that's not an easy goal. That's, that's sort of like, it's very like, oh, that's, that's really kind of vague, and how do I make that something that I can work with? Um, so then you start making it more specific. That's the first step. So if we're looking on breaking these goals down, how do I make it more specific? And you might say, I'm going to work on the skills I have around empathy to become better at relating to other people when I'm feeling stressed and under pressure myself. So you've looked at what— where is it that you would like to use more empathy?
Be.
So you then, you put it under that, and then you think about, why does this matter to me? Because that becomes that daily motivation. So why do I care? And that might be the long-term goal of whatever, you know, I, I want to be a wise and caring person. Or it might be a short-term goal of, I want a shorter-term goal of, I want to be nicer to my parents, or I want to be, I don't want my friends to get fed up with me because I keep falling out with them, or, um, I want to be able to persuade people of my point of view better. All sorts of different things. Think about why do you want to do this. So I guess that's coming back to those 5 why questions. Why for you? And capture that. And then it's a zoom out again, because— but not long, long term. It's saying zoom out to 6 months or a year. So what What will success look like?
Mm-hmm.
So what would look different if you achieve this?
Mm-hmm.
And then that is really powerful, like, you know, Juna, for the brain.
Mm-hmm.
Because if we give the brain something to work on that it can see, to an extent, we start working towards it without as much conscious effort. So if you can visualize what that looks like and you can capture what that looks like, it will help your brain to understand how to get there in ways that you might not even be consciously aware. So for this example, it might be becoming a more effective influencer and making more informed judgments, being more understanding, not having my friends— like we said, not my friends, they won't get annoyed with me and leave me out when they're having a party. That's sort of— they'll include me, and, and I get asked to more, to more stuff with more people because I'm just getting on with people better, whatever that looks like to you. Does that make sense to you, Juna Bobby MD? I mean, there's more to come. I haven't finished, but just that makes sense.
Oh yeah, no, absolutely. Because if you can visualize what you're gonna look like, how you're behaving, uh, how you're even speaking in that 6 months from now, then your brain can actually start to pay attention to things that will help you get there. That's what happens to your brain.
Yeah.
So you're actually giving your brain a set of rules and then your attention is becoming more focused on things that will help you get there sometimes without you even being aware. Yeah. Yeah.
And that, it's amazing. It really is. But it's, it sounds sort of slightly magical and mystical, but actually it makes sense when you think about the, the physiology of the brain.
Yeah. It's all moving your attention to the things that matter. To you at that moment.
Exactly.
That was part 1 of goal setting. Don't forget to hit subscribe so you can join me next week for a mini chill pill visualization to get clear on your goals. And the week after will be part 2 of goal setting. Thank you so much for listening. I hope you got as much out of this conversation as I did. To support the creation of this free content, please subscribe and share this podcast with anyone curious about productivity and wellness. Find out more about Fi at her website, fionamurden.com. Head on over to mindbodyspace.com where you'll find all the show notes and where you can sign up for my newsletter. You'll get tips from my unique neuroscience-based planner and courses developed from over 10 years of experience teaching high-performing students of all ages at Juilliard, NYU, Columbia, Achievement First, and many other organizations. Thanks again for spending this time with me. Until next time, this is Dr. Juna Bobby MD wishing you and your family wellness.
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