When we set ourselves goals, we of course tend to do so with the intention of actually hitting them. We take time to imagine how life will be when we get “there”, and then often project forward again from that success point into another future goal.
Before you know it, your imaginings have rapidly transformed into a vision where you’re seamlessly gliding through life leaving in your wake a beautiful trail of completed goals – somewhat reminiscent of a bowling ball having struck down multiple bowling pins.
“Ah, yes! That’s how my life is going to be!” you say to yourself.
Your smile widens whilst you begin crossing your fingers and cupping your hands behind your head. You lean back in your chair and triumphantly plonk the heels of your crossed feet on the edge of the office coffee table – you know, as they make that sound!
“Ah, yes”
Got a familiar ring that one, hasn’t it?
But as the great TV detective Columbo would say (that reference being for the more seasoned readers among us)…
“There’s just 1 thing Sir!”
Life is rarely so smooth!
Whilst we may have engaged in a multitude of such “coffee table” moments, the more common and truer reality is that our goal intentions get waylaid due to our approach and consequently, we often fail to hit them.
So what is going on here – what hidden hands are secretly slapping us up side our heads and causing our eyes to come off the prize?
Experience and research has identified a set of usual suspects regularly responsible for derailing our goal-setting processes – and we’ve called out these rogues in a comprehensive list below!
By becoming familiar with this list now, you’ll be equipped to take the right actions to realign your efforts and ensure your momentum stays on track the minute you see one of these suspects rearing its ugly head.
Here are…
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11 common reasons people fail to achieve their goals and what you can do to ensure you succeed at achieving yours
- You did not write your goals down
- The goals you set stayed in your mind and were never “brought to life” by transferring them out of the imaginal realm and into the realm of physicality
- Remedial Action: Commit your goals to paper by writing them out in full and clear detail – at the very least, print them out. When you have them, put them in a place where you can see them easily every day – we recommend buying yourself a lined, A4, hardback, notepad that will become your goal diary. Doing this helps keep your goals front of mind and also reinforces to your subconscious mind what it is you are aiming to achieve
- Waiting until you are fully ready before starting
- There will always be some reason why you are not fully ready which provides an excuse not to start
- Remedial Action: Just get your best (not perfect) plan together and start – you can adjust and fine tune as necessary along the way
- You don’t really believe you can achieve what you’ve set out to do
- If you have not fully bought into what you are intending to do, you will not have the courage of your convictions and the actions you take will lack the necessary force and focus to yield success
- Remedial Action: Re-analyse your goal, identify what part of it caused you to lose your faith, and re-work or scale down that part until it feels achievable
- The targets you set are too grand and not realistic
- You are overly optimistic and have not properly considered how your goals might be impacted or derailed by various factors – too much blue sky thinking with little appreciation of the related practicalities
- Remedial Action: Re-scale your goals into multiple, smaller units that together still comprise your original goal, and then map out the necessary considerations and implications of each smaller unit
- You are trying to achieve somebody else’s goals and not your own
- What you are trying to accomplish is not coming from your heart – it is the dreams of others that you are trying to follow and not your own
- Remedial Action: Stop and be honest with yourself. Ask yourself the question “what do I really want here and why?”
- Setbacks or failures you experience along the way drain your enthusiasm and belief
- You misunderstand what the nature of “failure” truly is
- Remedial Action: Always reframe so-called failures as invaluable and guiding feedback. Through this feedback, you are being shown exactly what not to do in order to succeed
- Your efforts are inconsistent
- Often linked to a lack of belief, you turn your efforts on and off like a tap and cause regular interruptions to any momentum you had started to build up
- Remedial Action: Create an action plan that breaks down everything you need to do in order to make the goal a reality. Start at the goal completion point and work back through all the things you’d need to do and by when, and calendarize each one starting where you are today. This is starting with the end in mind.
- You start to give up before the big results have come in
- Impatience causes you to expect things to happen much sooner than their natural completion cycle requires
- Remedial Action: Regularly analyse key results and use this data to create a likely timeline of success based on how you’re tracking in reality as opposed how you imagined you’d be tracking. Depending on the size of the goal, adjust your data analysis periodicity accordingly, e.g. there is no point looking at data every hour for a goal you initially thought would take 6 months to achieve – every other day or weekly makes more sense. And if the data is showing that adjustments are needed in your approach, then be agile and make the necessary changes as you go.
- You have a hidden fear of failure
- Often without being consciously aware, you have allowed fear to stop you doing the things you know you need to do that can move you forward
- Remedial Action: Drill into the fear and ask yourself what you might possibly be trying to protect yourself from – past experiences can be a valuable place to start here. Also, applying the “what’s the worst that can happen?” approach is good here because you soon realise there is virtually nothing in life that, if it happened, you’d never be able to recover from.
- 10. You have a hidden fear of success
- A reason that seems to defy logic but yet one that is definitely true. What we may become can potentially transform our current situations and routines to such degrees that the new you might be pushed way outside your comfort zone. Facing this prospect can be a daunting and scary possibility and thus becomes one to avoid
- Remedial Action: Drill into the fear and ask yourself what you might possibly be trying to protect yourself from – past experiences can be a valuable place to start here. Applying the “what’s the worst that can happen?” approach is good here, because you soon realise there is virtually nothing in life that if it happened, you’d never be able to recover from it.
- 11. Your goals are too loosely defined
- There is a major lack of clarity and granularity in terms of what you are trying to achieve
- Remedial Action: Re-work your goals according to the SMART principle – Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant (sometimes you may see Realistic), and Timed. We’ve put together a summary of the SMART goal framework for those readers new to the concept
Now that the most common reasons for goal failure have been identified and addressed, let’s look at how you can go one step further and lock in your potential goal successes even more tightly by following our unique, 4-step goal achievement method.
This is a method including specially crafted tactics that literally railroad you into generating the right type of momentum. With these in place, you’ll be put squarely onto a path that leads you and your business towards the achievement of staggering levels of success!
Let’s discover the 4-step goal achievement method now…