There could be many reasons why you’re not achieving your goals but from years of experience working with coaching clients and from my own personal experience, there are 9 key reasons why this happens.
We set our goals full of hope but then all too often we fall far short of achieving them. If this is you right now, keep reading and know that it’s definitely possible to change this.
9 reasons you’re not achieving your goals and solutions
- Your mindset is not supporting you
- Your goal is not important enough to you
- Your goal is unrealistic
- You haven’t planned to achieve your goal
- You’re not prioritizing your goals
- You get overwhelmed and don’t do anything
- You’ve got too much going on
- You lose focus
- You don’t have the right skills or knowledge
Below, I’ll talk about each of these points and give you tips to overcome these problems.
1. Your mindset is not supporting you
I’m starting with mindset because I truly do believe that this is the top reason why people don’t achieve their goals. If you don’t have a mindset that supports you then you’ll always struggle to achieve what you want.
Use AFFIRMATIONS to support you in creating a positive and powerful mindset that helps you to achieve your goals. Read How to use affirmations
EXAMPLE: I easily and consistently achieve my goals in all areas of my life.
Use AFFORMATIONS. These are question-based statements such as… Why is it so easy for me to achieve my goals? When we ask this kind of question, we tell our subconscious mind that this is true and our subconscious mind (Our really powerful mind) gets to work to make this true for you.
Supporting blog posts…
- 10 Affirmations for a Positive Mindset
- EFT for a Positive Mindset
- Affirmations for positivity
- Affirmations v’s afformations – What’s the difference?
Talk yourself into believing you can achieve your goals. Example, yes, I can do this! What can I do today to achieve this goal? Yes, I’m making great progress with this goal... The conversations we have with ourselves really do matter.
Also, from a law of attraction point of view, the Universe is always paying attention. When you have these super positive conversations with yourself, the Universe hears what you want and starts creating this for you.
2. It’s not important enough to you
It sounds crazy that we would set goals that aren’t important to us but I know people do this all the time, I have definitely done it too.
Ask yourself why you want to achieve this goal. Why is it important that you achieve this goal? If you’re why is not strong enough, you won’t work for this goal.
Is it truly for you? Or is it for someone else, or is it something you believe you should want to achieve? If it’s not truly for you, you will never put your all into achieving it and you will never really have the desire needed to achieve it.
Top tip: If you can’t find a strong why, I encourage you to let go of the goal and focus on something that does really matter to you.
Download your MONTHLY GOAL SETTING GUIDE AND PLANNER from my ETSY SHOP.
3. Your goal is unrealistic
Oh, how I hate this word ‘Unrealistic’ but it has to be said. Let’s say that you’re 2 years into your business and your monthly income has averaged out at around £3000 for the past 6 months, usually increasing a little each month. If you set a financial goal of £5000 for the month ahead, that’s probably unrealistic.
I think big goals are wonderful but when you set a goal that feels too unrealistic, your subconscious mind actually blocks this from happening for you.
My advice to you is to make your goals a bit of a push but not too unrealistic that you don’t even really bother to try to reach it or your subconscious mind starts working against you.
Using the example above a more realistic goal would be – Within the next 12 months I will increase my income to over £5000 per month.
4. You haven’t planned to achieve your goal
I’m a firm believer that a goal without a plan of action is useless. It’s more of a hope and that’s probably not going to cut it.
Whenever you set a goal, create a clear plan of action.
The action steps I will take to achieve this goal are…
Goal: I will grow my blog to a point where I always receive over 30,0000 sessions in 30 days.
Action steps: I will add a new blog post that is well thought out with good keywords and high value for my readers – Weekly.
I’ll share my blog on Pinterest, twitter, Instagram, Facebook… and I will let my mailing list know about all new posts.
I will focus on growing my email list of subscribers who really want to read what I have to say and I will update 1 old post each week and create new images for social media for re-sharing.
POWER QUESTION: What can I do this month, this week, and today to move me closer to achieving this goal?
Further reading 3 MOST IMPORTANT FACTORS OF GOAL SETTING
5. You don’t prioritize your goal
Goals that are not prioritized will always either not be achieved or they will take a very long time to achieve. I strongly recommend prioritizing your goals every day – Business goals every business day.
I also recommend that you focus on your goals as early on in the day as possible.
In my business, I make sure that my first task of the day involves creating some new content. This is my top priority.
When you do something to work on your priority goal early on in the day, you will consistently move closer to your goal. If I leave this too late in the day, I will all too often not do anything, thinking “I’ll do it tomorrow”
Even if you can only dedicate 10 minutes at the start of the day, do it, it will pay off.
6. You get overwhelmed and do nothing
This is a big one for so many people. You’ve set a goal and it feels so big that you just end up not doing anything. I’ll use an example of someone, let’s call her Jane.
Jane wants to write a book showing her expertise in her line of business “How to sell on Etsy” She knows lots of her blog readers would buy the book as it’s something she is asked about regularly.
But Jane never really progresses with this goal. When questioned about it, it becomes clear the problem is that she feels too overwhelmed by this goal.
Jane needs to break the big goal down into really small and manageable chunks.
- Create an outline for the book (key topics to cover)
- Draft write your intro
- Write 100+ words daily…
You can see where I’m going with this can’t you? When I’ve been really pushed for time, I have set myself a goal to write just 50 words a day. I rarely stuck to that low amount and most days I’d end up writing much more but if I was really struggling, 50 words were manageable.
Today I need to write at least 50 words feels doable.
I need to write a full book feels overwhelming.
All goals can be broken down in this way. When I wanted to build a habit of walking each day my dog (a dog who would quite happily just lay around all day with the odd break in the garden) – I set a daily goal to put my dogs lead on him and walk at least to the end of my drive. I can park 2 cars on my drive to give you an idea of how far this would be. Again, I nearly always walked further but if I really didn’t want to the end of the drive was fine. I’d still done it. Gradually I built that up and was walking 20-30 minutes most days.
7. You’ve just got too much going on
Sometimes we just have so much going on that focusing on our goals just doesn’t happen and sometimes we just don’t know which goals to prioritize.
Read Clarity Exercise For When You’ve Got Too Much Going On
I also encourage you to get the Simplicity Goal Setting Download, this pack will really help you to get clear about what is important to you and simplify what to focus on. (Available to buy on my ETSY shop)
8. You lose focus
This really happens when you are not clear about what your goal is – a vague goal. This could be something like I will increase my page views on my blog.
This is a vague goal. Why? Because 1 extra page view is an increase. A clearer goal, in this case, would be. Increase my monthly blog views to over 50,000. This is a clear and measurable goal.
- Get clear about your goal – Clear, specific and measurable then give it a date
- Write your goal down with a clear action plan
- At the end of every day, write down what you will do the next day to focus on the goal, what action step will you take
Following these 3 steps will help you to stay focused. You need to feel as though you are making progress consistently.
9. You don’t have the right skills or knowledge to achieve your goal
Your goal is beyond your capability right now. Be honest with yourself here and answer these questions…
- Do I actually know how to achieve this goal?
- Do I have the skills necessary to achieve this goal?
- Do I have the knowledge to achieve this goal?
- Do I need to learn something?
- Do I need to ask someone for help?
- Do I need to pay for someone else’s expertise?
Let’s go back to that example I used earlier where Jane wanted to write a book. She’s never written a book before and doesn’t really know how to do it. Jane would benefit from any of these options…
- Buy a book on how to write a book
- Sign up for a course on how to write a book
- Speak to someone who has already done it and ask for their help
So many of us have this idea that we need to do it all ourselves and we really don’t. So, if there’s someone who can help you or even do some of it for you, go for it.
For example, one of the things I focused on when I wanted to get my Ideal Weight Challenge blog sessions up to over 25,000 for a 30 day period, I knew
Pinterest would help me to achieve this. I invested lots of time in learning how to effectively use Pinterest, I still listen to every podcast by Simple Pin Media so that I keep learning the best and most current techniques. This is their specialty and I know they are always bang up to date. They know more than me and they’re always current. Learn from others.
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Focus on Great Goal Setting
Now that you know these key reasons why you’re not achieving your goals, it’s time to set really great goals and achieve them. Here are some posts to check out for more goal-setting tips…
- What are SMART Goals?
- Monthly Goal Setting Plus Goal Setting Planner pdf
- 5 Powerful Things You Must Do After You Set Your Goals
- Simple Goal Setting Guide – This is perfect if you do get overwhelmed
- Yearly Goals For All Areas Of Your Life (Not just for January)
- The Three Most Important Factors Of Goal Setting
Monthly Goal Setting Guide and Planner (DOWNLOAD)
DOWNLOAD from my ETSY SHOP Monthly Goal Setting Guide and Planner
If you’ve taken the time to read this post and taken the time to set your goals, it’s worth making sure you’re giving yourself your best shot at achieving them.
You’ve got this, you can do it!
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