5 Stunning Reasons Why You STILL Haven’t Achieved Your Goals
Are you still struggling to make forward progress with your goals? If so, you may be stumbling on (or missing altogether) one of these 5 foundational aspects of goal achievement. The good news — these are all easy to fix.
Every freelancer, solopreneur, coach, or consultant depends on having clear, concise goals. But sometimes it feels like it’s impossible to actually make progress on them. So read on and start taking action to make your goals a reality TODAY.
1. Your Goals Don’t Align With Your Values
Do you know what your values are? If not, taking some time to figure them out should be your first step. This can be as simple as asking yourself some questions:
- What or who would I be willing to die for?
- What or who would I be willing to dedicate the rest of my life to?
- What if I only had 6 months to live? How would I change what I am doing today?
Once you know what your values are, how closely do your goals align to those values?
Often people find that, when it all boils down, the goals that they have set don’t really have much in common with the things that they value the most.
If you find this to be the case, you really only have two options.
Either you re-evaluate, revise, or eliminate the goal.
Or, you have to go back and make sure you really understand what your values are.
Now, most importantly, can you actually picture yourself having achieved your goals?
You should be able to form a very clear picture in your mind of you living according to your values, with your goal achieved and in-hand. And, you should review this picture in your mind often.
2. Your Daily Activities Don’t Support Your Goals
Once you are comfortable with what your goals are and that they align well with your values, ask yourself what you do every single day that will bring you closer to your goals.
One of the biggest elements of goal achievement is this: small, simple, daily actions will do more to help you achieve your goals than just about anything else.
Karen Casey said, “One part at a time, one day at a time, we can accomplish any goal we set for ourselves.”
So many people wait for the time to be just right to make a big push toward achieving their goal. It’s sort of a heroic effort syndrome that turns out to be incredibly counter-productive.
Rather than a big push, every day identify just one thing that you can do to meet your goal.
I’ve always thought that goal achievement is a little like compound interest. Do a small thing today, and another small thing tomorrow, and yet another small thing the next day, and the next, and the next. And pretty soon you’ll find that you’ve accomplished something truly amazing.
3. You Are Too Busy With Administrivia
You may say, “How can I do something toward my goal every day? I’m too busy as it is.”
If so, take a hard look at what you do have on your plate every day.
What are you doing that you can eliminate?
What are chunks of “down time”, such as commuting on public transit, that you can make use of?
How can you stack your activities in order to better free up time?
4. You Aren’t Thinking Big Enough
Sometimes a goal is simply too small to motivate you to take action.
Your goal should be big enough and exciting enough that it pushes you to jump out of bed in the morning and is the last thing you think about before going to sleep at night.
If it isn’t, then you haven’t set a goal large enough to motivate you.
Legendary football coach Lou Holtz is reported to have said, “If you’re bored with life — you don’t get up every morning with a burning desire to do things — you don’t have big enough goals.”
Some people let a lack of belief get in the way of setting goals that will motivate themselves.
If this is the case for you, give yourself permission to suspend any thoughts of how the goal will be achieved, and focus instead on what and why. The how will come at the right time when you start taking action every day.
5. You Aren’t Following A SYSTEM For Goal Achievement
I once heard Brian Tracy say, “Any system for goal achievement is better than no system for goal achievement.”
Goal achievement systems range from the very simple to the very complex.
The goal system that will work the best for you will depend on a number of things. These include your own personality, your mindset, your planning and task management skills, and the difficulty and complexity of your goals.
Find any goals system to start with, then adapt to your own needs.
Lastly, always remember this statement from Helen Keller: “We can do anything we want, if we stick to it long enough.”
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