Everyone sets goals. We’ve all set New Year’s resolutions. We’ve planned to progress in our careers, get fit, eat healthier, etc. The problem is that wanting something isn’t enough to make it happen.

After a few failed attempts at achieving our goals, it’s natural to want to give up. It’s hard to identify what makes us fall short each time. The default is to blame ourselves or label ourselves as failures, thinking, “I’m just not cut out for this.”

If this sounds like you, don’t fret. We’ll look at some common reasons we cannot achieve our goals and how to overcome those missteps. Let’s do a little exercise. Yes, grab a pen and paper and let’s do some troubleshooting.

A Step-by-Step Guide to Make Your Goals Happen

Step 1: Are you choosing the right goals?

Let’s be honest. It’s difficult to figure out what we want when everyone has an opinion about it. You need to find your voice in the rubble.

Close your eyes for a moment. Imagine your life a year from now – your version of a perfect life. What if there were no obstacles? What would a day in your life look like?

For a moment, imagine yourself in that reality. What do you have for breakfast? Where are you going? Who is beside you? Please write it down in as much detail as possible.

Now look at each aspect of that desired future – your job, achievements or daily life – and ask yourself:

1. Is it realistic?
2. Is it a social expectation or something I decided I wanted?
3. What will my life look like if I don’t achieve this goal?
4. Does this goal challenge me to improve myself?

Be honest with yourself as you answer these questions. Then, look at the details of your ideal future. Which aspects make the most sense? Which ones are crucial to your development and happiness? Separate those into a new list. Once you’ve done that, we can move on to the next step.

Step 2: Are your goals detailed enough?

A common obstacle to reaching our goals is that we aren’t specific enough when we set them. That makes creating the map to achieve them difficult. We may think we’re progressing but we could be going in circles.

In a previous article, I talked about setting SMART goals. Here’s a recap:

SMART stands for specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time-bound. It is a tool that helps us set meaningful objectives that have a greater chance of results.

Specific

Specific goals are detailed and answer the questions of who, what, where, when, why and how. For example, your goal is to be captain of your sports team. That answers the “what” part. Now, who is involved? You will have to win the favour of your coach and teammates. Is it something that is possible this year or is it a long-term goal? Why do you want to be captain? Maybe it’s to hone your leadership skills or bring the team closer together. It would help if you had all these things in mind when you choose your goal.

Measurable

You have to be able to measure your progress towards your goal. If we continue the above example, it’s unclear how to measure your progress because some element of your goal is dependent on external forces – injuries, the influence external stakeholders will have on your team’s function, etc. Feedback from your team and coach would be the best measurement of your chances of success.

Attainable

It’s good to aim high. The trick is to find the balance between challenging and realistic. If you’re a beginner at a sport, becoming the team captain is unlikely. Don’t underestimate yourself but consider the skill and knowledge acquisition you need to reach your goal. Can you acquire the knowledge and skills?

Relevant

This element of the SMART tool requires you to know your reasons well. Is becoming captain of your sports team a vanity project? Or do you love the sport? Maybe you just want to be a well-rounded person. But if you had no interest in the sport and were just doing it because your friends were or because your parents forced you, the goal no longer seems relevant.

Time-bound

Set realistic deadlines and think about the consequences of missing your deadline.

Most people get through this step of setting SMART goals without a problem. The roadblock comes when they forget to reflect on their goals or attempt to build strong enough systems to maintain the motivation to follow through. 

Step 3: Build Effective Systems

Setting SMART goals is a great way to figure out where you’re going. The next part of the puzzle is figuring out how you’re going to get there. It’s the same as planning a trip. If you need to cross the ocean, you should choose a boat or plane, not a bicycle. In the same way, you need to figure out the most suitable and practical route to your goal. What do you need to do every month, every week or every day to get closer to your desired goal?

Those frequent actions, if done consistently, become habits. I’ve previously written about how to turn your goals into habits. You can read more about it here, but the following graphic illustrates an example of a strategy you could adapt for your own purposes.

Take each goal you have written down and make a list of milestones for each of them. Write down a list of priority tasks to achieve each milestone. Be as detailed as possible. Start with the most important tasks on your priority list and assign a timeframe for those tasks. For example, if your goal is to write a 24-chapter book in one year, that would mean writing two chapters a month. It would be easy to track if you will reach your goal by tracking how often you write. Do you write daily or only once a week? When will you set aside time to edit and proofread?

Schedule your tasks to keep track of them and try to be consistent. That being said, plan your systems as if every day will be a rough day because some of them definitely will be. Create contingency plans, e.g. “I want to write for one hour after class each day. Some days I will be too tired.” What could you do on those days? Perhaps, take a notebook and sketch out details for the next plot point, or edit a character profile. That way, you are still building towards your goal in some way.

Step 4: How Will You Stay Motivated?

Motivation. Let’s be honest. It’s hard to come by. When you ask yourself, “why should I put effort into this?” the reasons may not always be clear. So how do we tackle a problem with motivation?

Motivation is the driving force behind our actions. It is what pushes us to pursue our goals and maintain positive outcomes. Motivation is usually divided into extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.

Extrinsic

External motivators like trophies, awards, the approval of your parents, and avoiding punishment, e.g. cleaning your room because you don’t want your phone taken away.

Intrinsic

Motivators come from within, doing something because you enjoy it. For example, studying a subject because you are interested in it and really want to know more.

Intrinsic motivation is usually much stronger than extrinsic motivation. It would be good to keep a list of reasons why you decided to pursue your goal and find intrinsic motivation within those reasons.

We’ll go a bit more in-depth with motivation in the next section.

Step 5: Time for Behaviour Change

When doctors counsel patients on behaviour change, we ask two questions. On a scale of 1-to-10, how important is it for you to change? How confident are you that you can change?

When people are a bit uncertain on either front, there are some things we need to address. The usual barrier is that people lack the skill or motivation to change. We’ve already covered motivation a bit, but let’s discuss other obstacles.

Obstacles to Goal Achievement

Information and skills

A common barrier to achieving goals is that we lack the knowledge, experience or skills to achieve them. There are a few things you can do to remedy this:

1. Identify your knowledge/skill gaps
2. Understand the extent of that knowledge/skill gap
3. Consult the experts (i.e. books, podcasts, coaches, teachers, online forums, etc)
4. Practise your new knowledge/skills in real-world situations
5. Try teaching someone else your new knowledge/skills to see if you have a good understanding of how to use that knowledge/skill

Bad Habits and Patterns

Another barrier that stops us from achieving our goals is the counterproductive habits and behaviours we have. This includes poor time management, ineffective planning and procrastination. How can we overcome these barriers? Here are a few common barriers and what you can do to counter them:

Perfectionism

I think we underestimate how much perfectionism stands in our way. There is this prevalent notion that to be successful, you have to be perfect at what you do. Often this creates a great deal of anxiety and fear of failure. It is important to have compassion for yourself on your journey and understand that sometimes growth and success take trial and error.

Procrastination

Procrastination happens when we have negative feelings about a task. It can also be a symptom of perfectionism. It’s important to identify what is causing you to procrastinate. Address those feelings or obstacles and create a plan to overcome them. It may be helpful to break your tasks down into smaller, manageable chunks.

Negative thinking

The thing holding you back might be your negative ideas about your abilities or misconceptions about the world around you. People are prone to dysfunctional thinking when they are in stressful circumstances. These negative thinking patterns can be difficult to identify on your own. Here is a section I wrote about some common dysfunctional thoughts and some solutions. Work through them and do a bit more research to get familiar with the negative thoughts/patterns holding you back.

The wrong mindset

Along with negative thinking patterns, we might have the wrong idea about growth and success. You may find yourself stuck on your way to achieving your goals, overcome by the reality of your shortcomings. Perhaps you believe that you weren’t born with the talent to achieve what you want. However, that thought is limiting. I am a big proponent of the growth mindset – the idea that you can work your way up to anything and that by valuing effort and progress, you can enjoy the journey as much as the outcome. Read more about that here.

No schedule/plan

Even with all the motivation in the world, things can fall apart if we have no direction. Without a clear plan, we are prone to distractions. It’s important to clarify your priorities and create a schedule to take care of each of them or else you might find yourself going nowhere slowly.

I suggest keeping a planner or some other sort of visual reminder to keep you on track. More on how to do that is in this article.

Maintainance

Now, you’ve put in the work. You have a plan and you know what pitfalls to look out for – but, how do you keep the momentum going?

Celebrate small victories

You’ve put all this effort into change. It’s a lot of hard work. In the thick of things, it’s easy to get fixated on how far you still have left to go. However, I encourage you to celebrate every milestone, no matter how small and remember to count all the steps you’ve already taken as a win.

Allow yourself to be an amateur

The idea of allowing yourself to be an amateur goes hand-in-hand with my previous point. Very few things happen overnight. So, while you’re tackling something, don’t set yourself up for disappointment. Be a beginner. You might be in an environment where many people excel at what you are trying to learn. That makes it so easy to feel discouraged and like the effort isn’t worth it. You are haunted by the belief that you will never be as good as them.

Keep in mind that no two people have the same journey. You may be on step one while the person you compare yourself to is on step 11. In the beginning, allow yourself to be a little bit bad at things. Allow mistakes. It’s the only way to learn how to do things correctly. You will fumble but it’s your choice whether to laugh it off and learn from it or to let it be the chip on your shoulder.

Build in rewards for yourself

It’s simple positive reinforcement. Rewards are a strong motivator when intrinsic motivation is difficult to come by. When you choose a reward, it must be something you yearn for and would work hard to get. It must also be something that doesn’t stand in the way of your goal. For example, if your goal is to finish an essay within one week, it would be impractical to reward yourself with 3 hours of video games for each paragraph you write. This would be counterintuitive. Instead, you could allow yourself your favourite ice cream after you finish your draft and again when you complete it within your deadline.

Rember that your goal is not your identity

No matter how well you plan, there are always things that are out of your control. It is not unusual to become deeply fixated on a goal. If you spend a significant amount of your time on something, it starts to feel like a part of you, and therefore, if that thing doesn’t work out, you feel like you’ve lost something. But it is important to separate your ambitions from your identity. Your worth amounts to more than whether you get the top scores in class or not, or whether you get the summer internship you’ve worked towards. Life has meaning outside of your ambitions too. That is an important thing to keep in mind.

Summary

Achieving a goal is a tricky thing. For most people, it takes a lot more than deciding to do something and then doing it. Setting goals simply gives you a finish line to look towards. There is a lot more effort and planning that goes into getting you to that finish line. Be precise about what you want to achieve and create a detailed, actionable plan to get there. The small amount of effort you put in every day will amount to leaps and bounds in the long term.

I hope you found this helpful. Leave your thoughts in the comments section. Consider signing up for the Studyspiral newsletter for more insights, advice and perhaps a gift or two.