Are you struggling to achieve your goals? Do you know you want to achieve something but you’re not sure where to start? Or do you struggle staying motivated when on your path to achieving a goal?

Here are the top ten reasons why you may not be achieving your goals yet:

1. Your goals aren’t specific enough

If you don’t have clearly defined goals, you procrastinate. Sound familiar?

SMART goals are specific, measurable, attainable, relevant and time based. You need something that is not too general. For example, “get healthy.” You need to get specific around the details of your goal to ensure it is a clear, concise goal that you can set your sights on.

It’s important that you are as specific as possible when setting goals, otherwise you won’t have enough direction to follow through. A good way of knowing whether they are specific enough is to ask yourself “if someone else read this goal, could they clearly define it?”

2. You have no way of measuring your goals

It is much harder to recognise where you are at with reaching your goal if you have no way of measuring it. Tracking the progress of your goals is an important step to staying motivated. It allows you to set smaller milestone to achieve so you can celebrate when you meet them and re-evaluate if you don’t.

It’s best to assign a measurable unit to each of your goals:

• money
• scale of 1-10
• frequency (number of times you do something)
• volume (number of things you do)

For example: if you goal is to spend more time with your family every month. The goal needs to be defined before it can be assigned a measurable unit. If you define the success as spending one date night per fortnight with your significant other, and one family date with your significant other and kids per week then that would be your means of measuring the goal.

3. You make your goals unattainable

 If a goal is so unattainable and you feel it’s impossible to reach – you will simply give up. It’s so important to set goals that are challenging enough, yet not so challenging that you don’t even try.

For example, if your goal is “to lift 100kg weights in the gym in 7 days” when you have never worked out before – this is not setting you up for success. In order to work your way up to achieving this goal, you will need to set smaller milestones to train your body to be strong enough to lift this amount.

Consistency is everything. If you reach your goal in three months but your system is unsustainable for the long term, you could backslide and end up right where you started.

4. You only list your long-term goals

When we only focus on long-term goals, it’s easy to let the motivation fizzle out because we are stuck on the larger view. If we list out all of the short-term goals required to achieve the longer-term goal, we will have more success.

When we break down long-term goals into smaller weekly or daily goals – this makes them easier to focus on. Consider the smaller goals, the stepping-stones to achieve the longer-term goals.

5. You don’t write your goals down

According to studies on goal setting, people who write their goals down are more likely to achieve it than those who don’t.

The more vividly you can write down your goal the better. For example, you should be able to have someone read through your goals and clearly understand exactly what they are.

When you write down your goals, two amazing things happen. The first is, you store the information on a piece of paper that is easy to access at any time. You can place that piece of paper on the fridge or in your office so you will have a visual cue every day.

The second is, you encode information in your memory. When you write, you improve the encoding process. In other words, if you write your goal down then it has a much greater chance of being remembered.

6. Your day to day environment doesn’t support your goals

 The secret of your future is hidden in your daily routine. If one of your goals are centred around becoming healthier and your kitchen is full of chocolate, sweets and ice-cream – how challenging do you think it will be to achieve your goal?

Set yourself up for success in your day to day environment and ensure you are doing things today that your future self will thank you for.

You may want to change your day to day environment to remove temptations, clear clutter so you can become more focused or remove the TV from your room so you can achieve your goal of getting better quality sleep.

7. You get stuck on the end result with your goals

It’s very easy to get stuck on the end result with your goals and forget that there is always a journey to get there. Enjoy the process of achieving your goals.

It’s really important to break any larger or long-term goals into smaller short-term goals so you can celebrate the achievement of milestones along the way.

Rome wasn’t built in a day and it’s important to remember that everyone is on their own unique journey – including you.

Consistency is key here, and those who are more consistent day in and day out will achieve their goals faster than someone who is super dedicated but only in short bursts.

8. You get discouraged when you go off track

It’s important to be kind to yourself when you go off track and not allow your inner-voice to let you give up on the goal altogether. It’s normal to go off track sometimes and have ‘bad days.’

The main thing is to not let those bad days turn into bad months and bad years! When you go off track and are feeling discouraged, go and re-read your goals again. Write down WHY the goal is important to you and how you will FEEL when you achieve it.

This will help to reignite your passion and determination to achieve the goal.

9. You don’t celebrate your wins

Whether you are setting goals for business or personal; it’s so important to celebrate your wins. When you celebrate, endorphins are released inside your body and you feel amazing.

A large part of your success is your state of mind – having a success mindset will help to fast-track achieving your goals. Focus on celebrating every win, no matter how small. This will help to attract more positivity and continually motivate you to achieve your goals.

TIP: Remember you can always share your wins publicly! Your small win may inspire someone else around you to keep going and moving towards achieving their goals too.

10. You don’t have an accountability partner

According to research, the two main drivers that effectively help people achieve desirable behaviour changes are incentives and accountability. Achieving anything in life takes practice and changing daily habits

When you tell yourself and no one else that you will start your business, start a new gym routine, write a book or save $5000 – you are less likely to do it. The American Society of Training and Development (ASTD) completed a study on accountability. and found that you have a 65% chance of completing a goal if you commit to someone.

Once you have a specific accountability appointment with a person you’ve committed, you will increase your change of success by up to 95%.

You can make a commitment to someone today to ensure you achieve your goals. Your accountability partner could be someone trying to achieve a goal of their own OR your spouse, reliable friend or work colleague. Who can you share your goals with today?

Thanks for reading this post. Let me know below which of these you have tried and if you have a favourite goal-setting tip that you’d like to share

Olivia x