Why aren’t you succeeding?

It’s that time of the year when our goals for the year are no more our priority, and when some brave-hearted folks are revisiting their past performances.

How does it look? Are you happy with what you see? Have you succeeded? Just because you are reading this I’d assume you probably have some doubts there. But don’t lose hope; you are not the only one.

Isn’t it a habit with so many of us?  We challenge ourselves with personal and professional goals, try working on them, give up on some, accept the failure, and guiltlessly prepare another list for the next year. This cycle continues for years until one fine day when we give up for good, quoting some wise men’s words to hide our inefficiencies.  

Let’s explore 7 reasons why this happens to us, and work on fixing the habit of giving up rather than tweaking our goals to suit this habit.

1. Intention

One can always envisage a fancy goal, like making a million dollars this year or getting fit to beat Hussain Bolt in the next running event, or travelling the world to collect experiences. Such is the creativity of the human mind.

But wait! Do you really intend to accomplish these goals? For instance, do you really want to earn a million dollars or would you just like to make an x amount of money to live debt-free? Do you really want to outdo Hussain Bolt in a sprint, or will running a 2k make you just as happy? What’s your real intention?

Instead of glorifying our goals we should intend to align them to our true needs. There’s no harm in aiming big but it never harms to do a simultaneous reality check on our intentions.

2. Desire

How fired up are you to accomplish your goals? Do you have a burning desire to achieve the results? Often people tend to set goals just for the sake of it, which is of little use unless you really feel the urge to work on your goal.

If we want to achieve something, simply wanting it is not enough. We need to be inspired to want it so much that we work on it every single day.

3. Plan

Even if you have the earnest intention to feed your desires and pursue your goals, you may not find success unless you have an actual plan. You must have an idea on how you are going to make things happen. Planning helps visualize your actions. This is where you figure out ‘what needs to be done’ to achieve your goals.

As opposed to just setting ourselves up for a challenge, we must make an effort to finding avenues to realize it.

4. Strategy

If you had an action-plan, you should have seen some success in your efforts but alas, you are still tormented by the lack of active pursuit.

This is possible when your strategies have gone wrong. For example, losing 500 grams per week might work for many, but you may not be the one amongst those. So you may have to develop a strategy that would suit your situation, experience and your specific needs.

Contrary to what we are made to believe, we are not required to stick to a generalized idea of success. What may work for your friends may not work for you. We must therefore create an action plan to suit our individual world.

 5. Practice

Let’s be honest here. Do you religiously spend time on your goals every single day? Are you even considering the idea that your goal is a collection of your everyday efforts? No amount of planning will work in your favour unless you commit to working towards your goal every day.

Try including your action plan in your everyday schedule. Commit yourself to working on your plan everyday even if it means devoting just a few minutes of your day.

6. Setbacks

All goes well as long as all goes well. You stick to the plan, work on it everyday and suddenly something goes wrong.  Boom… you are derailed.

Sometimes setbacks are unavoidable. But why do you think it takes gigantic efforts for some people to get back on track?

Blame it on the lack of discipline to come out of chaos. A minor setback gives us the permission to lose hope in the plan. Your heart would reset to the comfort zone and make you want to stay there.

How we handle the inevitable interferences in our lives speaks volume about our commitment to a cause. Be it our personal goals or career, a minor setback should be treated as a time to cool down. We must bounce back at the earliest leaving no room for laziness to take over.

7. Results

You value results. Yes, it is important but you should not rely on the expected outcome to motivate you. If you are working out to lose weight, weighing yourself everyday and cursing the scale won’t help. It’s not just about you, your efforts or your weigh scale but your genetic make-up also has a say in this process.

Be it weight loss, earning a million bucks or advancing in your career, try to focus on things that you can influence – efforts for instance!

We must have a deeper sense of understanding that while making the effort is in our control, the results may take their own time. However, no effort will ever be wasted. Because when you make the effort, you either meet your goals or learn that you cannot achieve the desired results doing what you are doing right now!

Hope this helps. 

Good Luck,
Nithya Prabu

T: @nithyaprabu 

PS: Image Courtesy: https://goo.gl/BBkSgd; https://goo.gl/pMzE0t; https://goo.gl/Xwl5Oo