How To Fail Epically at Achieving your Goals

We all have goals. Some good and some bad. Want to know how to fail epically at achieving your goals? Let's not rush into it quite yet. First, let me ask, why is it that some goals never get achieved or even realized. I had the goal to go to medical school and become a Pulmonologist (aka Lung Disease Specialist Doctor), but as you can tell that did not happen.

Growing up I felt this pressured from outside to become a doctor. What I eventually realized was that I, in essence, adopted other people’s vision for my life no matter how well-being their intentions were for me. I internalized that as my own and when the going got tough, my WHY was not enough to carry me through.

When we never take the time to create a vision of where you want your life to go, others will create it for you. Another way to put it is if you aim for nothing, you will hit it every time. You must decide exactly what it is that you want to achieve. This brings me to my first point as to how to fail at achieving your goals.

#1 You Make Vague Goals

This is an important step in achieving your goals. We say to ourselves that we want to lose weight. I want to get toned, ripped. I want flat abs. I want to get bikini body ready. So here is a lesson in how your brain perceives this information. Your brain has two component: The conscious and subconscious. The conscious part of your brain is the rational, logical, analytical and thinking part of your mind. The subconscious is responsible for habits, reflexes, memory and the body’s autonomic functions (i.e. digestion, breathing, and circulation). With your subconscious, it operates like the captain of a ship. If you say sail East, then you will sail East without any specific destination. How will you ever know you reached your destination? That is why you need to be specific. Instead of saying, “I want to lose weight”, say “I want to lose 10 pounds and have 10% body fat”. Now, you have narrowed down your target. And like a torpedo or a guided missile, the brain focuses on this and you will now have a way to know when you have reached your goal.

“If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time.” - Zig Ziglar

#2 Your goals are not relevant or realistic

What is interesting is that most people make goals that are not relevant or realistic. You can’t just have a goal. That is not enough. The goal must be compelling enough and be in align with your mission and vision for your life. Think about what emotions come to your mind when you think of achieving your goal. Does it ignite excitement, fire, and passion within? That vision will be what you draw on when the going gets tough. Is your why strong enough and compelling enough to drive you onward through the difficulties. You will need this vision in the moments you must delay-gratification. In going after your goals, there will be things that you will have to sacrifice not doing.

Ever heard of “The Marshmallow Experiment” ??? There were some interesting findings in this study.

In the 1960s there were Stanford researchers studying hundreds of 4-5-year-old children. Researchers would take a child to a room and placed a marshmallow in front of them. They told each child that they would step out of the room for 15 minutes.

They told the children that if they did not eat the marshmallow while they were gone, they would give the child a second marshmallow. But if the child ate the marshmallow before the researcher came back, they would not be rewarded with a second marshmallow.

https://spsptalks.wordpress.com/2013/11/10/is-it-really-self-control-a-critical-analysis-of-the-marshmallow-test/

Imagine the torture these children went through lol. Some children did not even wait and went for the marshmallow immediately. Some withstood for a little while and then succumbed to temptation. But, there were also children that delayed gratification and earned the second marshmallow.

Researchers followed these children for 40 years into adulthood and what they found was startling.

The children that delayed gratification had higher SAT scores, better social skills, lower levels of substance abuse, coped better with stress and frustration. They found this time and time again for 40 years.

The main take away is that in order to have any kind of success in an area of your life, you will have to give up something or not do something. The good news is that you can get better at delayed-gratification by focusing on small habits and wins. Whether it is to do 1 more rep or give one more second of effort in an exercise. That 1% better is still better than before.

One way to delay-gratification is to focus on the prize. “KEEP YOUR EYE ON THE PRIZE”. Your brain calculates delayed-gratification by the reward. Therefore, create a compelling vision for the achievement of your goal.

#3 YOU DON’T RE-EVALUATE

Along the journey to achieving your goal, you will experience ups and downs. You must constantly re-evaluate how you are doing in this process. You have to measure if there is any progress or not. If it is a weight loss goal than you might measure your body fat and weight on a week to week basis. This is a way to provide feedback to see if what you are doing is working and if not, then “What can you change about it?”

If you didn’t set a realistic time goal, then now is the time to figure that out. Sometimes you will have to adjust the goal and there is nothing wrong with that.