It is the time of the year, where everyone starts thinking about New Year’s goals. Do you know that majority of people set goals every year but failed to follow through? Do you know that they tend to forget their goals within the first month of the year? Most people will try to set their mind to follow their goals to achieve their dreams but they fail.
3 Reasons Why Their Goals are not Effective
1. Weak ‘WHY’
Everyone has a reason for doing certain things in their life. We eat to survive. We go to work to earn money to support our family. We go to college to get a good job. An individual who does not have purpose, will not have reason to wake up and do the things that they want. Same goes for your goals. You need to have the answer to your WHY. Knowing your WHY is the pathway to have an effective goal system.
Ask yourself important questions? Why do I need to lose weight? Because if I don’t, I have to live on my medication for life. I can’t enjoy traveling because I can’t walk due to my weight. If I fall sick, I can’t go to work and won’t be able to earn enough to send my kids to college.
List down your WHY and keep it in a journal or notebook that you will use often. Set it as a wallpaper on your phone so that your why will remind you of your goals.
Goals are too big or general
Yes, goals that are too big can be demotivating to a beginner. Goal should not be too small either because it doesn’t give you enough motivation to start in the first place. Similarly, goals that are too general do not give you a sense of direction.
For example, if you say, ‘My goal for the year 2021 is to earn $50,000 a month’. This goal is too big if you are just earning $2,500. I mean earning $50,000/ month is not impossible but you might disappoint yourself, if it doesn’t happen in the year 2021. Instead you can shift this into a three year goal. For this year, start your goals in a smaller step, or let’s call it Mini Goal ‘I will earn $5,000 a month by end of this year’.
Lack of continuous motivation
This is the number 1 goal killer. Similar to having Weak WHY, lack of motivation is detrimental to your goals.
Remedy to this is simply by listening to daily motivation. There are plenty of free resources out there on Youtube and Podcast. If you can’t find any, listen to this Morning Rampage by Abraham Hicks. I listen to this twice every morning on my way to work. My days are better and it certainly rise my motivation up.
How to Set Goals that you can follow
1. Set 3 goals
There are 5 areas in your life (personal, family, finance, business / career, and health) that you can set goals and some of them may overlap with each other. Pick maximum 3 goals that you want to focus on. Make sure that you write down these goals in a planner, journal or anything that you will access regularly. Do not write in piece of papers because it is not concrete and will probaly get lost.
2. Find mini goals
Next, THINK what is the best timeline to achieve these goals . You need to set the right vibration. When you believe it is achievable, you will feel the vibration radiates within you.
Divide your goals into mini goals and set deadline within the time frame. For example, I want to lose 50 kg to reach my ideal weight. Losing the weight in 3 or 6 months will be extreme and will eventually demotivate you if you don’t reach it. Let’s set the goal for 3 years then. So, for this year, your goal could be ‘I will lose 15kg by 31st December 2021’.
3. Draw a strategy to work on your goals
Next, base on your goals, draw up strategy or tactis. Using the losing weight example,
Set how many days a week are you going to workout? What workout are you going to do? Weight training or cardio or combine both? What type of workout? Arm, leg or chest? And so on.
The more detail you get to your strategy, the more it paves an easy access to work on your goals as you know the map already.
4. Track
This is crucial, as you need to know how far have you gone in your journey. Every time you track, you know how much further you need to travel which can push you or motivates you to reach the finish line. The best tracking system is weekly but you can also do it monthly depending on your goal.
5. Review
Finally, reviewing your achievement from time to time will show you whether the steps or tactics that you are taking towards your goals are effective or not. Best review would be every month. You can review by checking the results of your action. For example, if you are trying to increase subscribers list, then check what is the increment percentage compared to previous month. Based on the result, you can pivot your tactics or maintain.
Conclusion
Remember : You need to set your mind that ‘If I fail, I will rebel and rise again. I will start again tomorrow.’ Looking forward and seeing that your journey is still far ahead, might demotivate you. Instead, look back and see how much further you have moved from your last step. This will make you realise that you are getting closer to your target. Good luck!!
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