486. The Last 5% - The Secret to Completing Any Goal
UnF*ck Your Brain: Feminist Self-Help for Everyone
Kara Loewentheil
4.6 • 5.6K Ratings
🗓️ 23 April 2026
⏱️ 20 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Have you ever gotten so close to a goal, and then one thing to goes wrong, and your brain immediately decide the whole thing was a mistake? That moment right before the finish line is where so many people quit. In this episode, I introduce a concept I call The Last 5% and showing you why your brain is most likely to turn progress into proof that you’re not capable right when you’re closest to getting the result you want.
If you’ve ever stopped just short of what you wanted or told yourself all your effort didn’t count because you didn’t get the final result, this will change how you approach your goals. You’ll learn how to stop making setbacks mean something about you, figure out what’s actually left to solve, and keep moving forward from experience instead of starting over.
Get full show notes, transcript, and more information here: schoolofnewfeministthought.com/486
Follow along on Instagram: instagram.com/karaloewentheil/
Mentioned in this episode:
WE'RE HIRING
Go to unfuckyourbrain.com/hiring to learn more about these positions and to apply.
The Future Coach Podcast is Here!
The Future Coach: How to Succeed as a Life Coach Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond is finally here. Every other week, you'll hear practical advice about becoming a coach, improving your coaching skills, and antidotes to the most common concerns, questions, and brain drama that come up with this work, whether you're just starting out or you're years into your career. If you want to find out more, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and hit that follow button.
The Future Coach Podcast is Here!
The Future Coach: How to Succeed as a Life Coach Today, Tomorrow, and Beyond is finally here. Every other week, you'll hear practical advice about becoming a coach, improving your coaching skills, and antidotes to the most common concerns, questions, and brain drama that come up with this work, whether you're just starting out or you're years into your career. If you want to find out more, you can find it anywhere you listen to podcasts and hit that follow button.
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | Hello, my friends. So if you are updated on the podcast, last week you re-listened or listened for the first time to the infinite 1%. And the whole idea in that episode is about how the gap between doing nothing and doing something is actually the biggest gap in the world, that we tend to look at how far we have to go when we're trying to achieve a goal, but we underestimate how big a deal it is that we actually got started. And so I've been thinking |
| 0:26.1 | about that concept in conjunction with a new mirror image idea that I want to share with you guys |
| 0:31.9 | that I think is equally important. Because while the beginning of starting something new or |
| 0:36.7 | going after a big goal is hard, |
| 0:38.5 | there's another moment that trips people up just as much and it often happens close to the end. |
| 0:44.1 | When you've done a lot or most of the work, but you don't quite have the return or the outcome yet, |
| 0:49.6 | or you don't know how far you are from that return or outcome. |
| 0:53.3 | So something's not working immediately, |
| 0:54.8 | or you have to wait, or there's a hiccup, or a challenge, or a string of rejections, or a bunch of |
| 0:59.8 | failures, and the finish line feels really far away. But instead of looking at it objectively, |
| 1:06.9 | your brain immediately turns it into a verdict about who you are and whether you were ever |
| 1:11.3 | meant to try in the first place and how you're a failure who can't achieve their goals. |
| 1:15.4 | And so that's what I want to talk about today. I'm calling this the last 5%. And I wanted to make |
| 1:20.5 | this episode because I coach women in my Mission Impossible Mastermind all the time who are going |
| 1:25.2 | after what I genuinely call impossible goals. They've got big |
| 1:29.1 | career changes or business goals, life pivots, creative projects that require them to become a |
| 1:35.2 | really different version of themselves. And I see how this pattern threatens to stop people in their |
| 1:40.3 | tracks because they get so far. And then one thing doesn't go as planned and their brain |
| 1:45.0 | immediately turns that into a indictment of everything else. And they start to believe that they |
| 1:50.3 | ask for too much. They're not capable. The whole thing was a mistake from the beginning. |
| 1:54.4 | And so today I want to make a really clear case for you about why jumping to that conclusion is not |
| 1:59.0 | just unhelpful. It's also logically and factually |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from Kara Loewentheil, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of Kara Loewentheil and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.