Around this time of year, the energy and excitement around setting New Year’s Resolutions begins to fade, and the continuous work required to reach your goals may start to wear on you. In fact, studies have shown that around 80% of New Year’s Resolutions set will get abandoned, and many of them are abandoned in the month of February, specifically.
You might find yourself procrastinating more, indulging in more “cheat days,” or just simply trying to remember why you set your goal in the first place.
Why is this?
In looking at my own past experience both with failed and successfully-accomplished goals, and in studying the art of goal-setting, I’ve recognized several key reasons why we stop pursuing our goals before reaching them. In the following, I want to lay out the common mistakes we make in setting and achieving goals and teach you how to overcome these obstacles to create forward momentum toward your dream life.
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You Forgot Why You Set the Goal in the First Place
Intially, we set goals because we see something in our lives that we’d like to change for one reason or another. However, as time goes on and we “lose motivation,” we might forget the driving factors that possessed us to set the goal in the first place.
Many experts in the goal-setting business refer to these “driving factors” as “Your Why.” Your Why is the reason (or reasons) that motivates you to take action (or not) toward a certain result. Research suggests that the stronger Your Why is, or the more strongly you feel about the intention behind your goal, the more likely you are to stick with it!
So you want to get really emotionally attached to your goal and get specific about why you want to achieve it.
How do you do this?
Start by making a list of all of the reasons why you want to achieve the goal. Begin with the reasons that are specifically related to you, and how reaching the goal will benefit YOU. Then continue to add reasons that would be of benefit to the people around you like your friends, family, spouse, kids, etc. Make sure you put this in writing, the more concrete Your Why is, the better.
Another helpful tip in creating a strong “Why” is to put yourself in the position of the “future you” who’s already reached the goal – how would you feel? What would you be thinking? What actions would you be taking? Write all of these thoughts and feelings down.
Once you’ve got Your Why written down, put it somewhere noticeable and read it daily (or multiple times a day!) to keep a constant reminder about your committment your goal!
You Don’t Have a Plan
Another main reason you might not be reaching your goal is that you don’t have a solid plan. If you’re anything like me, you may have a lot of dreams or desires that you want to pursue “someday,” but you struggle with taking that next step to create a concrete roadmap for making that dream a reality.
I used to be very resistant to the idea of planning or calendaring and would go about my days more or less “winging it.” While this worked some of the time, I wasn’t getting the results that I wanted to see and I always felt rushed and panicked because I was, essentially, flying by the seat of my pants.
It wasn’t until I started planning out my most important goal-related tasks beforehand that I started to see real progress.
The best thing you can do to set yourself up for success is to start using a calendar or a planner to set specific time blocks aside for working on your goals. Make sure you do this at least one day in advance and that you write down the specific result you’ll achieve at the end of the time block you set. For example, instead of writing down the vague plan of “work out tomorrow,” you want to write something like “tomorrow between noon and 1:00 p.m., I will run do 25 pushups and 25 situps.”
Start by planning only your most important task for the day, then gradually build up to scheduling out your entire day. You will be so much more likely to accomplish your goal if you have a plan written out in advance!
You Don’t Set a Measurement for Success
Every goal you set should have a defined metric. In other words, there must be some concrete event or circumstance that you can look to in order to see whether you’ve met your goal.
Many of us set vague or general goals that don’t specifically list our desired outcome, which makes it much harder to see results. For example, we are apt to set a goal to simply “lose weight” instead of stating a goal with a specific measurement such as “lose 15 pounds by July 1st.”
When you don’t have a defined metric for your goal, you never feel like you’re “succeeding” because you’re not entirely sure what it is that you’re working towards. Additionally, you have no way of evaluating what’s working and what’s not because there’s no standard by which you can measure your progress. Lastly, when you don’t have a defined or concrete metric, you often focus on the wrong things rather than the actions that will actually help you make forward progress.
In order to ensure success, you must define a measurement for your goal and create a timeline to achieve the metric. When you’re setting your metric, think of the numbers. For health and fitness goals, you might set a metric like “lose 15 pounds this year” or “be able to do 20 pushups by December 31st.” For money goals you might want to “save $1,000 in the next 6 months,” or “earn an extra $200 a month from my side hustle by next year.”
Make sure you set a result that you can definitively say you have or haven’t reached by a specific date.
You’re Not Taking Action
Raise your hand if you’ve ever spent several hours listening to a personal development podcast, taken a business course, or read a book about weight-loss and then proceeded to wonder why you haven’t created a successful business or lost a single pound?
I am so guilty of this.
Reading and consuming other people’s work seems productive because you’re learning so much and you’re getting information about how to achieve the goal. The problem is, if you’re not actually DOING the thing, you don’t see any changes in your life!
I was stuck in this mode for such a long time! I loved reading about how to improve my life, and while I felt more motivated, I was still doing the same things and creating the same results. It wasn’t until I focused my energy on taking action, creating, and doing the work that I started to see changes!
So start taking action toward your dreams today. At first, the actions can be small ones, but just make sure you take the first step in the right direction and go from there.
You’re Worried About Other People
If you’re dreaming big, you may have a goal that seems impossible or scary. If your goal will require you to make massive changes in your life, one of the things likely holding you back is worrying about what other people might think of you if you go all-in.
You might be worried about people judging you or criticizing you for your choices.
You might be worried about alienating the people close to you by wanting a new and different result in your life.
You might be even worried about strangers on the internet making mean comments when you decide to put yourself out there.
So many of us don’t pursue our goals because we are worried about what other people will think. This is why it’s so important to remember that self-improvement is about you and no one else! Keep in mind that other people’s criticism is always about them, not about you. For the most part, people who write or say mean comments are taking out their own internal fears, insecurities, and doubts and projecting them (unfairly) onto you.
Try to put on your blinders and ignore any outside commentary from others that doesn’t support the goal you’ve set for yourself.
You’re Living With Self-Doubt
Probably the most heartbreaking reason many of us don’t go after our most-dreamt-about goals is that, for one reason or another, we don’t believe in ourselves.
Self-doubt can seem crippling, but I promise you that with some hard work you can overcome it!
There are so many great books and resources out there about overcoming self-doubt. One really good place to start is with this FREE course offered by my coach Natalie Bacon: Overcoming Self-Doubt. It’s all about how to stop letting self-doubt get in the way of pursuing your dream life.
Final Thoughts
If you’ve struggled with any of the obstacles listed above, don’t fret, you’re in good company. Sticking with your goal is challenging, but when you understand the common pitfalls and learn how to overcome them, there will be nothing in the way of your living out your biggest dreams!