Five Reasons Why Success Plans Often Fail

Goal Setting: How to Tweak Your Strategies for Better Results

Are you a positive, goal-oriented person who would like a bit more success with your goal-setting strategies? Here are five ways success plans sometimes fall short, and how you can tweak your own plan for better results.

1) Vaguely defined goals and/or strategies If you want to get to New York from Chicago, you could probably get there by climbing in the car and simply starting to drive, but you’ll get there faster and more comfortably if you plan the trip, have daily destinations along the way, and bring a roadmap with you. It isn’t enough to make something your goal. You have to define the steps that will get you there.

So often we set goals like “I will lose 25 pounds,” then can’t understand why we put on 5 instead. We do better if we plan the steps, such as lose 2 pounds a week, exercise at the gym twice a week, and have a daily intake of so many calories. These steps are our strategies. Having a goal without clearly defined strategies is like driving around the Midwest countryside hoping you’ll stumble upon New York.

Solution: Break your goal down into the practical steps or strategies you must take to reach it. Write these strategies out in clearly defined, measurable terms. Rather than “I won’t work late as much,” write “On Tuesdays and Thursdays until June 1st, I will leave the office by 5:10 p.m.”

2) A reluctant commitment With or without strategies, if you don’t want a goal enough to commit to doing what it takes to achieve it, chances are you’ll drop out before you reach your target. Motivation is extremely important. Think about the times you’ve wanted something with every fiber of your being. Didn’t you find it easy to stick to your goal plan and didn’t you achieve your desired outcome?

Solution: Pick goals you’re strongly committed to. If you really don’t want to start that workout regimen yet, don’t create a goal program for it. Doing so before you’re ready will only lead to failure, which will make it yet harder to get started with the regimen, because you’ll have your added guilt to contend with. If you know you ought to do something, and find yourself resisting, ask your subconscious mind to reveal to you the attitude that prevents your moving forward. Then look at that thought.

3) Forgetting to make it fun When goal setting programs are too arduous, we balk at implementing them. Doing the work required to reach a goal isn’t typically easy, so making the process as enjoyable as possible is part of achieving success. Intrinsic motivation goes a long way in helping, but rewards and celebrations for milestones are needed, too. Having a reward to look forward to keeps us going when the goal looks far off, or when our commitment flags due to physical and emotional fluctuations.

Solution: Make fun a major consideration of your goal-setting program. If you know you need to exercise five times a week to reach a weight goal, for instance, you’ll have a better chance of sticking with your weight loss plan if your strategies involve exercise activities you find fun instead of the kind you abhor. Structure rewards and celebrations for milestones of progress right into your goal plan. The boost to your enthusiasm that celebrating gives will get you over your rough spots. Rewards need to be planned and specific, so you can look forward to them as self-promises. It’s the looking forward that is motivating.

4) Neglecting to track your progress As you move toward a goal, it’s important to track your daily or weekly progress (for longer goals, your monthly or yearly progress as well). This keeps us accountable so we don’t “cheat” and lie to ourselves. It also provides motivation, as we see a visual record of our progress. Without motivation and positive reinforcement, it’s easier to give up on goals than to keep working toward them.

Solution: Make a chart that measures your progress. Post it inside your closet door, on the wall of your bedroom, or inside your personal planner. Record all the times you perform the strategies you’ve committed to at the time you resolved to perform them. If you find you’re repeatedly failing to do a strategy, take a look at it to see why. If the strategy needs tweaking to be workable, just tweak it. It’s natural for strategies to need adjustment as you move toward your goal.

5) Expecting too much of strategizing Unlike visualizing, which can be applied to any goal, strategizing is only appropriate for some goals. In visualizing, a person can ask the universe to create most anything, but strategizing only works for some things. When we goal-set for targets we have no material control over, strategizing becomes interfering or manipulation, and we set ourselves up for disappointment and resistance.

Solution: If you’re having trouble moving toward a goal, rather than berating yourself, consider whether the goal or strategies could be at fault. Is this goal something you really want and that’s good for you to have? Is it also good for other people, or are there those who don’t want you to succeed? Are your strategies effective in moving you toward your goal or did you conceive them before you had knowledge of what is really needed to reach this target? Getting down on yourself makes no sense if the reason you’re not having more success has to do with answers to these questions. Adjust your goal or strategies to be realistic, and you’ll be back on the path of progress and enjoyment.

Goal setting is a skill, and like any skill it takes practice to be done smoothly. Learn from your experiences in goal setting so far, and adapt your efforts to your growing understanding.

And pat yourself on the back for your tenacity! Those who stick around long enough to learn a thing become the experts. That’s going to be you.

If you'd like more information about Goal Setting there are a number of articles and tools on one of my other websites - www.4lifeselfhelp.com

Download our free Goal Setting Ebook - '7 Pointers to Goal Setting Success'

You are actually a Success, even though you may not think it.

“The secret of success is constancy to purpose.”
– Benjamin Disraeli

I think most of people want to be successful, but there are many who never seem to reach their ‘ultimate goals’. They don’t realise that even if they haven’t made it to their ultimate destination yet, they are still a success.
I make sure that every day, I tick off each and every ‘win’ that I have had during that day. They might only be little ‘wins’ like ‘I finished going through my emails for the day’, but they are worth acknowledging and celebrating.
Otherwise you can go through your whole life striving for your goal, and not realise that...

YOU ARE SUCCESSFUL EVERY SINGLE DAY!

Here is an article that Winsome (Global Secrets) has recently written about success.

What Is Success – Or How Will You Know When You've Got There?

If you step back and take a look at your life you actually already have reached success. Your life is in fact a success story even though you may not realise it. Take a look at where you are successful …..

When you think about success, first think back to your childhood.

"Are we there yet? Are we there yet? Are we there yet?"

Do you remember that mantra chanted from the back seat of the car during long drives? You could have been passing amazing scenery, unusual people and having a great conversation with your family ... but all you wanted to do was get to the destination so you could get out of the car and play.

Most adults live their lives as if they are still in the back seat of the car. They ask "am I successful yet" like a mantra and ignore what is passing them by.

It seems that we are so focussed on the end goal we forget there is a whole lot of stuff that happens in the middle. And if we reach one goal we instantly set an even bigger goal and start aiming for that one (and beat ourselves up for not hitting our goal earlier, faster, better).

We don't allow ourselves to see that our success journey is really a series of smaller journeys with infinite possibilities for enjoyment along the way.

We don't allow ourselves to feel relief, gratitude and to bask in the glow of achievement when we reach a minor milestone. We just race off to the next one without drawing breath.

We don't allow ourselves time to stop and reflect on our journey so far – what we have learnt along the way.

So how can you turn this around?

The first step is realising life is not a one destination goal – your only measure of success is not just one exam at the end of your life. Life is a series of smaller tests – some obvious and some not so obvious. Success is a cumulative process on how you go on all of these tests.

If you are a logical type – look at setting goals in all areas of your life. This includes work, spirit, family, health, and friends. Once you have set your targets ask if they really are achievable – I mean REALLY achievable.

If you set your targets too high you will never reach them – which means in your world you will never achieve success. Break the big targets down into smaller manageable steps and tick them off as you go. Factor in time to celebrate each success – with a personal rule that you can't start the next step until you have properly celebrated the one you have achieved.

Take time at each step to reflect on your learnings. Accept you did some great things as well as some things that can be improved upon. The focus here needs to be on a balanced assessment – not a doom and gloom drama.

If you are a feelings type - work out what success feels like. What emotions do you associate with success? How does it feel in the base of your belly?

Each day when you reflect on your feelings – look to see when you have felt success that day. Again, you are looking for a balance of your emotions. You have succeeded just by virtue of the fact that you are still alive and breathing. Allow yourself to feel the gratitude and the emotions of success.

The bottom line is there is no one single "there" from your "are we there yet” mantra. There are a series of "theres". Stop – celebrate and enjoy each one. You are a success.

If you would like to read more of Winsome's articles about Success and Life Happiness, go to:

www.4lifeselfhelp.com

Win #9 for the day, “Put up Winsome’s Success article on our Blog”

Congrats to myself! :)

Richie. (Global Secrets)