Do You Ever Fail to Achieve Goals and Objectives?

Anyone who has ever failed to achieve your goals and objectives, please raise your hand.

Ahh. That looks like…hmmm… ALL of us! Yes, I would definitely say that most of us have, at one time or another, failed to achieve our goals and objectives.

And, when that happens, we tend to feel pretty bad about it.

It’s happened to me more than once – and I WRITE about setting and achieving goals and objectives! But you know… I’m human. Sometimes I set goals and objectives that are probably just a bit unrealistic. When that happens, I tend to fall short – or FAIL altogether on that particular goal.

So, I got to thinking about this topic. I read a few ideas some others have about this phenomenon – and one thing that struck me was the idea that sometimes we set goals and objectives based on what we THINK WE SHOULD achieve rather than what we ACTUALLY DO NEED to achieve.

Whether it”s a work-related goal (e.g. “increase my sales by 25%”), relationship goal (e.g. “spend more quality time with my spouse/kids”), or personal goal (e.g. “lose 20 pounds”) – if we aren’t convinced that we ACTUALLY NEED to do it, we’ll probably NOT DO IT.

So often we humans are compelled to do what we THINK we should do.

Maybe we want someone’s approval – even if it’s a subconscious thing. Or, we feel we need to take control over a part of our lives based on comparing what we have against what others have.

Regardless of the reasons, I truly do believe that it is important to become VERY CLEAR about what it is that WE WANT FOR OURSELVES – deep in our hearts.

Only once we know what we truly want or truly do need to accomplish will we be able to create a “visual” of ourselves achieving our goals. I speak about creating this “visual” or “mini mind movie” at length in my Goal Setting Strategies Guide – which, in 2023 is in the process of being updated, so right now it’s unavailable, but I will have it available again once it’s updated!

Then, once we have that clear vision, it is a lot easier to map out a strategy for reaching that goal.

And yes, we definitely need a strategy for approaching the attainment of a goal – think of it as kind of a road map. But, having a map is kind of useless if you don’t have that vision to begin with.

For example, let’s say your “goal” is to go on vacation. But you aren’t clear WHERE you want to go. You could send away for every map in the world, but still they will be of absolutely no help to you – and you’ll just get frustrated.

So, in the example, you clarify where you really do want to go – let’s say, you want to tour France.

NOW you can start to narrow down the maps you will need. Do you want to tour the countryside? Which part? Do you want to tour Paris? The museums? Once you narrow down your goal, you can begin drilling deeper and “map” out your strategy.

The strategies you will use at this point are your objectives. Again, please refer to your copy of our Personal Goal Planning Strategies Guide, where I will be going into great detail explaining the difference between “goals” and “objectives.” Once you have a clear understanding of those differences, writing your goals – along with the “road map” – or strategies of HOW you will move toward your goal will be much easier.

But, remember that – deep in your heart – YO U must believe that YOU really want to achieve the goals you are saying you want to achieve.

Although it may be a bit of an exercise to do this, I truly belive that once you clarify what YOU REALLY WANT or NEED versus what you THINK YOU WANT … or even worse, what you feel you are being PRESSURED TO ACHIEVE based on other people’s opinions, you will begin to find moving toward your goals a little easier.

If you would like a great motivational poem to keep you company on your day to day journey of goal achievement – actually one of my favorite words of motivation and inspiration – hop on over to my page that has the famous poem here: Edgar Guest, “It Couldn’t Be Done” a great motivational poem!

Also, if you would like a few categories for goals and objectives, we discuss that in the article here => Some Categories for Personal Goals and Motivation.

In the meantime, I’ll be writing more on this topic, and will link new articles here – so stand by for more!

🙂 Kath