Do you feel like you’re constantly failing at achieving your goals? You’re not alone. Here are 8 common reasons why EVERYONE failed at achieving their goals in the past, and reasons why you don’t have to continue failing!
Sick and tired of feeling like your failing at your goals?
I get it.
You sit down, you dream big, you set big, fun, exciting and inspiring goals for yourself, and then zip. Nothing. Nada.
You don’t achieve them.
And worse, you get so discouraged that you feel like you keep on failing over and over again that you STOP setting goals!
I’m here to tell you that it’s not your fault.
First of all, you didn’t fail. There’s no such thing as failure. Only lessons.
As long as you take your perceived failure and learn from it, then you haven’t failed at all. You just gained experience and knowledge that you can then apply to your life moving forward.
So. Are you ready to NOT fail anymore? To actually be able to achieve your goals and feel proud about accomplishing something that you’ve been wanting for a long time?
Well, let’s get into it, shall we? Here are the 8 reasons why your goals failed in the past, and why they don’t have to anymore!
Reason # 1 | It wasn’t the right goal
If you set goals and never accomplished them, it’s because it wasn’t the right goal.
That’s the different between setting inspired goals and traditional goals. By setting inspired goals, you’re picking goals that connect with your heart and the true essence of YOU.
When you set traditional goal, you’re focusing on only one element of the goal-setting journey – what you want.
And don’t get me wrong, you can have what you want. But there’s a different between setting goals that come from an inspired place, that stem from asking the real, deep and important questions of life, and then figuring out what you want from those answers.
So if in the past, you failed at achieving your goals, it’s because you didn’t choose the right goal.
Let me give you an example.
For the longest time, my goal was to lose weight. My focus became to exercise (excessively at times), to limit what I could and couldn’t eat.
And what happened? I became stressed out about eating and started developing an unhealthy relationship with food.
I over-exercised and exhausted my body (which…news flash…is counter-productive to weight loss). And I was just UNHAPPY.
I was frustrated when I didnt see the results even though I was putting so much and effort into it! I didn’t enjoy eating. Going out became stressful. And I forced myself to go to the gym all the time, so much so that I didn’t even enjoy exercising anymore.
Until I changed my approach and set inspired goals around my health.
Instead of “I want to lose weight” my goal became to feel healthy, to have a lot of energy and vitality. I wanted to feel confident and strong in my body. I wanted to challenge myself in a FUN way at the gym (hello, 30 push-ups and 10 chin-ups!) but most importantly, I wanted to feel happy and have fun moving my body.
What happened next is incredible.
I’d be trying to lose weight for over 2 years. And even though I did lose weight, I didn’t see such a significant change then in the span of a few months after I shifted my goal from losing weight to wanting to feel good in my body!
And that’s the difference between setting inspired goals and trying to achieve traditional goals.
When you shift your focus and your goal EVER so slightly, you’re able to garner your inner energy and wisdom and focus to direct it to the right places so that you CAN achieve your goals, with more ease and with less resistance.
Reason # 2 | It wasn’t specific enough
The second reason why your goals failed in the past is that your goal wasn’t specific enough.
Let’s use the previous example again: “I want to lose weight”.
Ok, great! How much weight are we talking about? Do you need lose body fat, or are you trying to build muscle? Why do you want to lose weight? How do you want to feel? What will it mean to lose the weight? What emotions are you searching for? Do you want to be healthy and full of energy, or are you just focused on looking a certain way?
Do you see how many more questions there are that you should be asking yourself to gain clarity of vision. To truly understand the goal.
The moment you get specific, that you define the nitty gritty of your goals, that you understand the real motivation behind the goal and WHY you want to achieve it and what emotions you’re searching for, your mind will be able to guide you more easily towards achieving those goals.
So if you didn’t achieve your goals before, it’s okay! That means that you need to get more specific and describe it as much detail as possible so that you can figure out your path towards achieving it!
Because the moment you gain clarity of vision, the easier it will be for your conscious and subconscious mind to guide your day-to-day choices, decisions and behaviours towards achieving those goals.
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Reason # 3 | It was TOO specific
The flip side of defining your goals is that there’s such a thing as the goals being TOO specific.
I know, I know, minor eye roll. But it’s the hard truth.
There’s a fine balance between defining your goals and having clarity of vision, and then being so specific that you barely have any room to maneuver and have some level of flexibility.
See, if you failed at achieving your goals in the past, it might be because you were too restrained with yourself and the pressure you put on yourself became counter productive.
You have to remember that the journey of setting and achieving your goals should be inspiring and exciting and FUN! I can’t emphasize that enough.
As you’re working towards your goals, you need to feel a smidge of “pressure” so that you are following through on what you should be doing. BUT you shouldn’t feel so much pressure that it becomes overwhelming and frustrating and unpleasant.
Because that’s when you’re going to give up. Or you’re going to miss a day here and a day there.
If your goal is too narrow and too specific and too focused, you’re removing the possibility to have some flexibility along the way to be able to adjust as you go so that you can enjoy the process a bit more.
Reason # 4 | It was too challenging
Another reason why you might have failed at achieving your goals in the past is that your goal might have been TOO challenging.
The moment that your goal is so challenging that it becomes overwhelming to even think about how you can achieve it, your setting yourself up for failure.
Because if a goal is so hard that it’s hard to even envision the steps on how to achieve it, you’re subconsciously already giving up before trying, because your mind knows that it’s going to be too damn hard and impossible to achieve.
Like I said before, there’s a fine balance between setting goals that inspire you and excite you, and goals that will make you feel like it’s so far from the realm of possibility that you won’t even feel capable of achieving it.
And don’t get me wrong. If you have BIG, crazy goals that you’d like to achieve, I’m with you 100% and I’m rooting for you. But, you have to remember that you need to practice the art of achieving your goals and if this goal failed in the past, it doesn’t meant that you’ll never achieve it.
It just means that it’s maybe not the right time and that you need to practice achieving other goals before trying to achieve this big, huge, inspired and fun goal for yourself!
Reason # 5 | It wasn’t challenging enough
The flip side of reason #4 is that your goal maybe wasn’t challenging enough.
Let’s put it this way. If you already know exactly what you need to do to achieve your goal, then it’s not challenging enough.
You should be able to draw a tentative path and milestones and steps that you need to take to get to your destination, but if you already know exactly how you’re going to there while having 100% certainty that you WILL achieve that goal…then I’m sorry to say that your goal isn’t challenging enough.
Because achieving your goals isn’t only about getting to the destination, but it’s about the journey and how you get to your destination and what you learn along the way to adjust and try different approaches and change your approach so that you can learn more about yourself and grow stronger.
- Related: How to Uncover and Live your Purpose
Without feeling challenged, you won’t learn along the way and achieving your goal will be too easy, to the point where you won’t feel that sense of urgency.
And you might achieve your goal! But you will have missed out on the process of learning and growing along the way. You’re taking away the magic of it all. And honestly, you’re missing out on half the purpose of the journey, which is personal development and becoming a better version of yourself along the way.
Reason # 6 | You didn’t have an effective plan
Another reason why your goals failed in the past is that your plan wasn’t clear or effective.
In other words, you had a clear vision of your goal (but not too specific!), your goal was challenging (but not TOO challenging!) but you didn’t have a clear plan set up on HOW you were going to achieve your goal.
You knew what you wanted, it was an inspired goal that connected deeply with you, but your plan wasn’t clear so you didn’t know what you needed to be doing and working on on a daily, weekly and monthly basis.
You didn’t what you should and shouldn’t be doing and focusing on.
Even though having a clear vision of your inspire goal is an important part because it helps guide your conscious and subconscious mind towards the actions you need to take towards that goal, you still need a plan.
You still need to tease out the steps that you need to take, the things you need to be working, what areas of yourself you need to be working on, what skills you need to improve, the things you need to be DOING to achieve that goal!
Your plan wasn’t clear. And yes, it will take some time and research to figure out an effective plan, but the moment you have a plan of action to achieve your inspired goal, it’s a game changer.
Reason # 7 | You didn’t track your progress
Along with your effective plan of action to achieve your goal, you also need to track your progress along the way.
If your goal fail in the past, even though you had an amazing and detailed plan, my bet is that you didn’t track your progress.
If you don’t track your progress, how do you know what your efforts are and whether you’re doing enough every week? How will you know if your progress is fast enough or that you’re on the right track?
As you’re working towards your goal, you need to track your progress, efforts to analyze what’s working and what’s not working. Because there’s a certain level of analytics involved when it comes to achieving your goal. And you need to see the data to not only keep you motivated but also allow you to analyze and adjust to make sure you’re on the right track.
And this will require some commitment on your part to set time aside every week to look at your progress, to analyze, to assess. But the investment of your time will be worth it, trust me. Because once you start seeing and feeling progress, this will accelerate your efforts and will fuel your motivation.
The moment you know that you’re on the right track and you can see achieving your goal unfolding in front of you, you will feel proud of yourself and will only want to keep going.
Reason # 8 | You didn’t do the inner work
The final reason why your goals failed in the past is that you didn’t have a holistic approach to achieving your goals.
Because setting and achieving inspired goals is not about the outcome. The main purpose isn’t getting to the destination and achieving the goal (even though it’s pretty dang awesome when you do).
But achieving inspired goals is about the journey, it’s about transforming yourself and your life and who you become throughout the process so that you can create and live a life that you love. A life that’s filled with deeper meaning and purpose.
As you’re working towards your goals, you need to become that you were always meant to be. It’s about becoming who you need to be achieve your goals.
Let me give you an example.
If you want to be healthy, full of energy and confidence, then you need to exercise and eat healthy. There’s no way around it. That’s just how the human body works and it’s just science.
So that means that you need to be an active and healthy person. And that translates into specific behaviours and choices. In other words, the behaviours that you need to practice are mindful eating, moving your body on a daily basis. You have to choose healthier meals and choose to drink more water.
Do you see how you have to be a certain type of person to achieve that inspired goal??
To achieve your goals, you need to have a holistic approach. You need to transform yourself, do the inner work, so that you can transform your life and see the extern results.
GET STARTED!
I threw a lot at you in this post, I know.
So if you’re still with me, I’m high-fiving you right now.
As you went through this post, I hope that you were able to pinpoint the mistakes that you’ve made the past when you tried achieving your goals.
But you’re probably wonder, what now? What do I do now?! How can I achieve my goals?!
Well, to get you started, you should check out the resource library where I give you the foundational tools that you need to start working on yourself so that you can set yourself up to achieve your goals!
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