Top 3 reasons why we fail our new year goals
Picture this; it's the beginning of a new year and, as always, you sit down to write down your goals for the year. You are excited, full of hope and motivation. This time you are going to make it happen, this year will be different for sure!
You write down a long list of all the things you want to do, start and learn. It's a long list, quite ambitious but you truly believe you can do it; you've got the whole 12 months for that duuhh!
January and February is great; you are in a full swing of activities, jumping from one thing to another. You are so busy and enthusiastic. Some of items from your list have to wait till later, but that is fine!
Come Summer time, and your motivation is dwindling. You forget about some of the goals while others simply do not seem as important as they did in January. You enjoy your Summer trying to do some of the things from the lists but you find it challenging; time is scarce and you start to ask yourself; "do I really want/ need it?". By Sept/ Oct, you barely do anything related to your goals; life took over and you realised it was just too hard. It does not feel good but you try not to think about it.
It's the end of the year and you start to think about your year; it's time to reflect and you have that "arhggg" feeling, that stomach twist and pangs of guilt and sense of failure start to creep in. You simply feel you failed yourself and you are not good enough, not organised enough, not disciplined enough to accomplish what you wanted. You did not get that bikini body, you did not learn a new language and you did not save that amount of money of you wanted etc
January comes and the same story repeats...
Does that sound familiar? Well, this is at least how it has been for years for me. I was so hard on myself and I was kicking myself for not completing a long list of big and demanding goals but I never actually stopped to pause why I was recycling the same story every year. Until I did and learned; SO here are the 3 top reasons why I and you may be failing or rather overwhelming ourselves with unrealistic goals year on year:
WRONG "WHAT"
You may have 12 months in a year but that does not mean you will have enough time, energy and resources to address all areas of your life. Trying to fix and do everything ends up in doing very little or nothing to the full extent. A clear overview of different areas of your life (e.g. love life, work, image, money etc); where you are, how happy are you in each of them, what's most important etc will help you determine what you must focus on first or what should be your only focus. Gain clarity of each of the areas and the different aspect in them, and then decide what needs to be addressed as a priority and what can wait.
UNCLEAR "WHY"
Without a strong and clear reason, you won't be able to stick to you goal and push yourself to complete it. At some point, you will start to question it and realise, you don't actually want it that much. Your goal should come from a personal place of need, desire or ambition; don't do something, because everyone else is doing it (e.g. running, enrolling into that course etc). Think deep WHY you want to learn it, why you want to do it, why you want to achieve it and understand your emotions;
what will it give you?
how will it make you feel?
what will happen if you don't do it?
MISSING "HOW"
You want to learn a new language? You want to loose 10kg? You want to start a new hobby? OK, sounds amazing! Now, do you know how to do it, what steps you should take, what resources you need, how often do you need to engage, how much money you need for that, can you do it on your own or you need support? What's your deadline and is it really realistic for you with all the responsibilities you have? If you don't have those questions figured out and many more; it is very unlikely you will achieve your goals; this is the truth and I am speaking from my own experience.
If this is something you have gone through yourself or maybe it is something you want to avoid; please do join my masterclass on "How to set realistic goals and make them happen" on Wednesday 6th of Jan at 7pm; click below to register!