7 Common Reasons You Fail To Achieve Your Goals Every Time

Time and tide waits for no man. 
Too many goals and too little time to execute them. 
Man wants success but man gets failure.

Perhaps it takes an extraordinary power to achieve success. Or a bit of magic and superhuman abilities.

The world is a difficult place and it is very hard to achieve sustainable success. But the world is not an impossible place. If you have paid your dues, then you’ll surely get the results you deserve.

Perhaps you have failed too many times, and you believe the world is working against you, this may be the time to review that thought.

Have you checked your habits and your mindset? Have you checked the little things that keep drawing you back but have gone unnoticed?

In this post, I’ll be talking about 7 reasons you fail to achieve your goals. These sources of frustration are things you can change today and see a difference in achievement of your goals.

1.         There is no clear definition of your goals

For many people, they just want to be good at their job or they just want to be rich. If you’re one of them, then you have been setting vague goals. Is this a problem? Well, be the judge.

When a pilot says he’s on a flight from New York to Los Angeles, he’s not on a flight to anywhere in Los Angeles. But to particular coordinates in Los Angeles. When a plane fails to land at those coordinates, it's called a plane crash.

You need to make your goals as specific as possible. If you want to be rich, how rich do you want to be? $100,000? $1,000,000? Or $2,550,000?

If you want to be great at your work, what is the definition of great? What are the metrics used to define great in your work? What have the influencers achieved before they were tagged great?

If you have no defined destination, then anywhere you get to will be the destination. When you have a specific target, then you have something measurable to work towards.

Setting specific goals doesn't mean you’ll achieve them all the time. But even when you fail to achieve it, you’re conscious of the failure.

Many times, this consciousness of failure is what pushes you towards success. If you can't measure failure, how will you measure success? If you're unaware you have failed, how will you push for success next time?

2.         You’re unwilling to change your habits

There is a popular saying that says: ‘insanity is doing the same thing over and over, and expecting different results.’

If you have goals you want to achieve, you also need to ask what you need to change. Think about it, there's a reason you have been failing perpetually to achieve your goals.

One of those reasons is the habits you maintain. Don't you think it is impossible to have the habits of successful people and be a failure?

If you have a goal you want to achieve, then you must build up habits that will make its achievement possible.

For instance if your goal is to write a novel but you have no scheduled time to write daily, how do you hope to complete that novel?

If you hope to be a great writer, but you have no time to read nor write, then you’ll always fail to achieve those goals.

If you maintain the habits you currently have, then you’ll continue to achieve what you have always achieved: frustration.

In his book, War of Art, Steven Pressfield calls it resistance. He said: “It's a repelling force. It's negative. Its aim is to shove us away, distract us, prevent us from doing our work.”

3.         You have no belief in yourself

If you have no belief in yourself, then who else will? If you set a goal but you don't even believe you can achieve it, then you’ll likely fail to achieve it. Why set that goal in the first place?

It is detrimental to have no belief in yourself. Because you begin to indulge in self-sabotage. When you're supposed to take action, you either fail to take it, or you take it too late.

Having a belief in yourself will make you cut through obstacle after obstacle without losing enthusiasm. Have you seen a successful man without a strong belief in the goals he/she has set?

Elon Musk is an example of having strong beliefs. With SpaceX, he aims to create a viable means of interplanetary transport that will make living on Mars possible.

Even when multimillion dollar rockets exploded, he kept on going. Today, SpaceX has achieved things that were previously impossible in rocket technology, at relatively lower cost.

Belief in your goals, and few things will be able to stop you from achieving them.

4.         Failure to think deeply

To achieve something worthwhile, you also have to cultivate the habit of thinking deeply. A worthwhile goal is a goal that has been achieved by few people.

Such a goal has many obstacles to its fulfilment. This is why you need to think deeply. There are very few things that are not achievable to someone who can think deeply.

Albert Einstein said: “The world as we have created it is a process of our thinking. It cannot be changed without changing our thinking.” This is another way of saying change your thinking, change your world.

Whenever you go through a deep thinking session, your brain goes to work with an aim to provide a solution. Many times, you may not get your answers immediately. But those questions have been passed on to your subconscious and you're surely going to get the answer you need to achieve your goals. It could come as easy as the solution popping into your consciousness.

Stephen Guise said “deep thoughts compels us to be accountable to our values (by uprooting inconsistencies) and propels us towards our dreams.” Through deep thinking, Stephen Guise has been able to publish 3 successful books.

To be a high achiever and achieve your big goals, you must also create a time when you're able to think for an extended period of time. Thinking deeply is an uncommon activity, the few who engage in it are those who reap the enormous benefits.

5.         Failure to ask for help

No man is an island. That is why to achieve some goals, you need help from some people. There are many reasons you may need help from others.

In some cases, the resources you need to achieve such goals could be in the hands of someone else. In some cases, someone has achieved the goal you're trying to achieve and can teach you the dos and don'ts.

Many times, people fail to ask for help. You can't achieve much by always going at it alone. There are people who can help you. Seek them and ask for their help.

No one has ever achieved a worthwhile goal without the help of some people who made it possible. You don't have all the resources. But can you ask for help from people who have the resources you need?

6.         Lack of discipline

The man who would achieve a worthwhile goal will be ready to work on it everyday until it is achieved. Discipline is what keeps you going even when your results seem far away or when you have no hope of achieving your goals.

Sometimes your goals are invisible and it becomes difficult to hope. Discipline is what keeps you going. When the novelty of your enthusiasm has worn off, it's discipline that keeps you going no matter how difficult things may be.

Jim Rohn said: “Discipline is the bridge between goals and accomplishment.”

Discipline will help you to continue performing the tasks in your plan no matter how difficult or uncomfortable those tasks may be. Only someone who keeps at their goals long enough will get to see its achievement.

7.         You give up too easily

There is no goal that is failure proof. Are you averse to failure? You’re not alone. No one likes to fail. It is painful to fail after applying a lot of effort.

Anybody who has set a goal will probably fail one or two times. But the difference between the achievers and the non-achievers is that non-achievers give up after going through failure.

You must know that going through failure is a big part of the learning process. This post is not in any way telling you that you will never fail. Because failure is a part of the learning process. And part of success itself.

When you see failure as part of a learning process, you're able to analyse it so that you can prevent it in the future. If you fail today and give up on your goals, how can you say you really want to achieve those goals?

Where there is a will, there's a way. People who have succeeded in the goals you set have failed many times, even more than you have. But they got up one more time.

They see it as a learning process on what not to do.

Conclusion

Setting goals is the easiest thing to do but achieving those goals is another ball game entirely. You have to become a new person to achieve your worthwhile goals.

You have to become someone who can achieve your goals. You have to form habits that will make achieving your goals easier. To tell you the frank truth, these good habits are difficult to cultivate.

Jim Rohn said: “If you really want to do something, you'll find a way. If you don't, you'll find an excuse.”

If you really want to achieve your goals today, look at these 7 points. Which one have you been having problems with? 

You have to take action on it today. Not sometime later. But now. And nothing will be impossible for you to achieve.

What do you think causes failure and what can be done about it? I’ll like to hear your views in the comment.

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