The Competence Trap: Why Being "Good At It" Is Keeping You Stuck

Written By Rhonda Lavoie

Show Notes

If you are looking at your 2025 goals and feeling a heavy sense of shame because the boxes aren't checked, you need to stop grinding and listen to this. We have been conditioned to believe that success equals sticking to the plan no matter what—even if we hate it—but research shows that "goal disengagement" is actually essential for your health.

In this Season 3 Finale, I am taking you behind the scenes of my "Real Reel.". I planned to sell 50+ homes and scale the TUF Institute in 2025, but I didn't hit those numbers, and I actually closed the business. On paper, it looks like failure, but it was actually the year of the Pivot.

We discuss the "Competence Trap"—the danger of doing things just because you are capable of them, not because they are your calling. I also share why I delayed the launch of The Paced App and the simple 3-step audit you can use to clean up your life before 2026.

In This Episode:

(00:00) - Why I "failed" my 2025 plans (and why I’m happier for it).

(02:24) - The shame gap: Dealing with the space between "the plan" and reality.

(04:24) - The End of History Illusion: Why we make plans for a version of us that doesn't exist.

(07:31) - The Competence Trap: Just because you can carry the load doesn't mean it's yours.

(08:53) - Why I delayed The Paced App launch (and refused to force it).

(12:54) - The "Unfancy" System: 3 steps to audit your life before the New Year.

Resources Mentioned:

Goal Disengagement Research: Understanding why quitting lowers cortisol and inflammation.

The End of History Illusion: Why we underestimate how much we will change.

This Week's Challenge:

Look at one goal you are dragging into 2026 like a heavy suitcase. Open it up and ask: "Do I need to persist, or do I need to pivot?".

🔗 CONNECT WITH RHONDA

·       Music for The Rhonda Lavoie Podcast written and recorded by Wade and Tan Fehr.

Transcript

[00:00:05] ​In January of this year, I had a very specific definition of what a successful 2025 looked like. I was going to sell 50 plus homes. I was going to scale the TUF institute to new heights, and I was going to grind, push, and dominate. But if you look at my life today, here in the middle of December, I didn't hit that number and I actually closed TUF Institute.

[00:00:35] Now on paper, it looks like I've failed my own plan, but the truth is I have never been happier and I have never been more aligned than I am right now. So as you stare down the barrel of 2026. I have a question for you. Are you holding onto a goal just because January you said you had to, or are you brave enough to admit that?

[00:01:07] Maybe just maybe you've outgrown it. Let's talk about the year of the pivot.

[00:01:17] Welcome back to The Rhonda Lavoie Podcast. I'm your host, Rhonda Lavoie. If you are new here, welcome to the conversation. This is the place where we try to strip away the fluff. We're all about getting it done and keeping it real. We talk about the messy middle of ambition, the hiccups that knock us down, and the systems that help us bounce back faster.

[00:01:39] And today is our season finale. We are wrapping up 2025. Usually this is the time, uh, where podcasters give you the "Top 10 ways to crush your goals" or a highlight reel of all of their wins. And don't get me wrong, I love a good win, but you know me, I don't do fancy. I don't do fake. So instead of a highlight reel,

[00:02:07] I wanna share my Real. Reel. I wanna take you behind the scenes of a year that looked nothing like I planned and tell you why changing your mind might be the bravest thing you do all year.

[00:02:24] Okay? I wanna talk about the elephant in the room. I know exactly how you feel right now. It is the end of the year, and you're looking at that list of resolutions you wrote 12 months ago. Maybe it's in the notes app on your phone, or maybe it's that, uh, pretty journal somewhere that's gathering dust and you're doing the audit, right? Maybe you wanted to lose those 20 pounds, but this scale hasn't budged. Or maybe you went the other way. Maybe you wanted to launch that side hustle, but you're still researching because you're scared to start.

[00:02:59] Maybe you wanted to save a certain amount of money, but life happened. The furnace broke 'cause the car needed tires. The kids need braces. It's always something, isn't it? And when you look at the gap, that space between "the plan" and "the reality", you feel a very specific emotion. It feels heavy. It feels like shame.

[00:03:23] You start telling yourself those terrible stories. You say, I'm flaky, I'm inconsistent. I never finish what I start. We have been conditioned, especially as ambitious women, to believe that success equals sticking to the plan no matter what, even if it hurts, even if we hate it.

[00:03:48] But I need you to hear me clear on this, and I really want you to let this sink in switching your goal isn't giving up. Giving up is when you abandon yourself. Switching your goals is often the only way to save yourself.

[00:04:13] Think about it. What if the plan you made in January was made by a version of you that doesn't exist anymore?

[00:04:24] Okay, let's get real. I wanna be completely transparent with you about my 2025, because I know how social media works. You look at my Instagram or you watch these episodes and you think, oh, Rhonda has it all figured out. She pivoted to this new brand. She's building an app. She's just go, go, go. But let's rewind to January.

[00:04:47] Let's go back to the beginning. I started this year with a totally different head space. I had a heavy focus on real estate volume. I had that number in my head, 50 plus deals. That was the metric. That was success.

[00:05:04] I was also pouring so much energy into the TUF Institute. I was coaching agents in tech, so in kvCORE BoldTrail, trying to get more members for the collaborative building curriculums. I was busy. And here's the thing, and I think a lot of you can relate with this.

[00:05:22] I was good at it. I knew how to do it. It was in my wheelhouse, and because I could do it, I just assumed I should do it. But as the months went on, it turned from a passion into a chore. It wasn't this sudden disaster. It was just this realization that I was working hard. But I wasn't working happy. I remember sitting down to record episodes for my previous podcast, TUF Coffee Shop Talk, and it used to be fun.

[00:05:59] I used to love it, but suddenly, I don't know it. It just felt like a chore. It felt forced. I was trying to weave real estate into personal development and then trying to weave entrepreneurs into real estate, and it just started to get messy. It felt like I was trying to wear shoes that were two sizes too small.

[00:06:20] I found myself looking at my calendar singing recording day or podcast day and just dreading it, and you can't fake that when your heart isn't in it. The quality slips. I wasn't bringing the energy, I was just going through the motions to get the content out. And this, this right here is the danger zone.

[00:06:44] This is where most of us get stuck. I think so many of us, we stick it out. We stay in the job or the relationship or the business model, not because we love it , but because we are terrified of the flaky label.

[00:07:02] We worry about the perception, don't we? You think if I pivot now, what will people say? Will they think I'm all over the place? Will they think I can't hack it? So what do we do? We keep going. We keep grinding on something that brings us zero joy just to prove to an imaginary audience that we are consistent and that ultimately makes us miserable.

[00:07:31] And I had to sit with that and it was uncomfortable. I realized that the TUF Institute didn't fill my cup anymore. I was doing it out of obligation to my own competence. Just because you are good at something doesn't mean it's your calling. So I made that call and honestly it was a little scary. I closed the institute.

[00:07:56] I stopped the membership. I didn't pause it just to be safe. I stopped it. I canceled all the memberships, and I pivoted here too to The Rhonda Lavoie Podcast. And you know what's funny? The moment I decided to focus purely on helping people on the human side of ambition, not just the transactional side, everything changed.

[00:08:21] Turning on the camera became easy again. The friction just vanished, and I think that's how you know when that resistance lifts, you know you're back on the right path. Now I don't wanna paint a perfect picture here. Not every pivot feels like sunshine and rainbows immediately.

[00:08:45] Sometimes a pivot feels like a gut punch. As many of you know, I've been building The Paced App.

[00:08:53] And oh man, I had a plan. The goal was a big, beautiful launch for New Year's. New year, new. You get Paced. It's a marketing dream, right? Well, reality hit about two weeks ago. My developer is struggling and we are about 10 weeks behind schedule. The app just isn't ready. And the old me, the old Rhonda, the one obsessed with the January plan, she would've handled things very differently.

[00:09:25] I wouldn't have screamed at anybody 'cause that's not me, but I would've been a ball of stress inside. I would've internalized it, I would've lost sleep, probably made myself sick, and I would've forced it.

[00:09:37] I would've pushed a broken product just to hit the deadline, just to say. I did it. But I looked at the situation and I realized I cannot launch an app that is designed to help you break the trance of overwhelm by rushing it through a frantic, stressful launch.

[00:09:57] That would be a lie. It goes against everything the app stands for. So I pivoted again. The app is coming in 2026 and yeah, I know people are watching. I know they might be thinking, oh, she announced this big thing and didn't deliver on time, but here's the difference between where I am now and where I used to be.

[00:10:20] I am self-aware enough to know. That their judgment doesn't matter. I would rather be late and excellent than on time and average. I would rather be honest about the delay than fake a perfect launch. Now you might be wondering, why am I telling you all of this? Why am I sitting here airing my dirty laundry about changing my podcast and delaying my app?

[00:10:50] Because I want you to understand that changing your mind isn't a weakness. It's actually a sign of high intelligence. I was reading about this recently and it totally blew my mind. There's a psychological concept called the end of history illusion. Have you ever heard of this?

[00:11:09] I hadn't. Basically psychologists have found that most of us recognize how much we have changed in the past. So if I was to ask you right now, are you the same person you were 10 years ago? You'd probably laugh and you'd say, no way. I'm smarter, I have better taste and I have better boundaries.

[00:11:30] But here's the trick. If I asked you, will you be the same person 10 years from now, subconsciously your brain says, yeah, pretty much. This is the finished product. I'm done cooking, but that's false. We are constantly changing. We make plans in January. For January me. But by July ,July me has lived six months of life.

[00:11:57] She has new data, she has new experiences. She's tired of things. She used to like. If July me sticks to January Me's plan, she's acting irrationally. She's serving a master that no longer exists. There is also something called goal disengagement.

[00:12:19] We talk so much about "grit" and "persisting" and "never giving up". But research actually shows that the ability to disengage from a goal that isn't working is essential for your health. People who can't quit the wrong things, they end up with higher cortisol, higher inflammation, and more physical illness.

[00:12:39] So when you pivot, when you close the business, change the major or delay the launch. You aren't failing, you are literally taking care of your biology.

[00:12:54] So how do we apply this? Because I don't want you to just quit everything the second it gets hard. There's a big difference between hitting a dip and hitting a dead end. . Here's the Unfancy system I use this year. It's not complicated. It's just three simple steps. I used to audit my life before 2026. , Step one, the competence trap check. It's a mouthful, but it's actually not that hard. I want you to ask yourself a hard question, am I doing this because it fills my cup or just because I'm good at it? This was my realization with TUF Institute. We often do things just because we're capable, just because we can carry the load. But just because we can carry the load doesn't mean it's your load to carry.

[00:13:49] If the only reason you're still doing it is that you're capable. That is a recipe for burnout. Step two, the friction audit. Where is the friction? When I was doing the Real Estate podcast, the friction was high. I felt heavy.

[00:14:07] Every time I sat down. When I switched to this format, the friction vanished. Pay attention to where you're procrastinating. Procrastination isn't always laziness. Sometimes it's your intuition screaming at you that you are on the wrong path. If it feels forced, listen to that.

[00:14:30] And step three, look for the afterthoughts. And this one's my favorite. Back in January when I designed my vision board, it was full of those big goals I mentioned earlier, but there was one tiny thing on there.

[00:14:45] I had tossed a little text box on the graphic at the last minute with the word "keynote". It was honestly an afterthought. Something I just put on there at the last minute, and I threw it on there thinking maybe one day. But as I stripped away the things I didn't want. That little afterthought started to shine through.

[00:15:07] Now looking at 2026, I'm not standing on live stages just yet, but I truly believe this podcast is building toward that connecting with you here is the fuel that is getting me there. Look at your year. What was the tiny thing you did that brought you the most joy?

[00:15:30] Pivot towards that. I wanna leave you with one final thought before we wrap up the season. I know some of you might be sitting there thinking, but Rhonda, if I had just started the right thing sooner, I'd be so much further ahead. I wasted 2025. I honestly don't believe that. I look at my transition to exp Realty as an example.

[00:15:58] If I had moved three years earlier, sure logically I'd be further ahead financially, or if I'd started The Paced App in January, it would be live right now. But I can't think that way and neither can you. Because if I had done those things earlier,

[00:16:16] I wouldn't be the woman I am sitting in this chair. I needed those experiences, the delays, the friction, the wrong turns. To build, the character required to handle what's coming next. . Everything happens for a reason, even if we don't know what that reason is until much later.

[00:16:36] Here's your challenge for the holiday break, and don't worry it's not work. . I want you to look at one goal you're dragging into 2026, like a heavy suitcase. Open it up, look at it and ask, do I need to persist or do I need to pivot. And remember switching, your goal isn't giving up.

[00:16:57] It's just evidence that you are growing. All right. That's what I have for you today.

[00:17:04] I just wanna let you know we're taking a break for the holidays, spend some time with the family. It means I'm logging off. I'm going to eat the cookies, watch the movies, and be present. I will be back here refreshed and ready on Tuesday, January 6th, 2026. Until then, give yourself some grace, keep it real, and get it done.

Rhonda Lavoie
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