3 Reasons Why You’re Not Achieving Your Goals This Year

If you’re reading this post, I bet there have been times when achieving specific goals has been frustrating and even feels out of reach.

Whether that’s to earn a higher income than before, lose weight for a special event, buy that dream home or get our health back on track. Everyone has

I’ve been trying to figure out how to achieve my goals faster in the last five years. I would read countless books, listen to dozens of podcasts and watch hundreds of Youtube videos, all on the science of achieving our goals faster.

Each person has their methods for achieving goals. Some would use a vision board, while others will have an active board full of tasks and milestones.

Some would write their goals down in detail, while others will have them stuck in their mind until they achieve their desires.

Although I was curious about the secrets of high achievers, I was more interested in why so many of us struggle.

Here are three reasons we fail to achieve our desires based on my experience.

Focusing too much on the goal rather than the system

I learned this right after reading a book called Atomic Habits.

Rather than focus on the goals I have put in place, it was better if I focused on the system that helped me create winning habits that helped me get to my desired outcome.

A perfect example of this was my goal of losing 15 kilos (That’s 33 pounds to my international friends)

After researching, my best bet was to start using the Keto diet to transition to Intermittent fasting. If I planned to work, I could then move to a more extreme eating habit called OMAD (One meal a day)

I started slowly by cutting down carbs and sugar in my diet. I struggled for the first two weeks as my body needed time to adapt. However, I stayed the course and made it a habit to eat food under the Keto plan.

After two months, I have now gotten used to eating no carbs or sugar. I lost six kilos (thirteen pounds) at this time.

I then moved to intermittent fasting. Although my wife was worried about my diet experiment, she supported me throughout this journey. I was skipping breakfast and lunch and was eating dinner at around 4 pm.

I lost a further 10 kilos after three months once I made a habit of eating one Keto meal a day.

This was my “aha” moment.

I focused on building a system to help me make a strong habit of eating a certain way that helped me achieve my weight goals.

“You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems. Your goal is your desired outcome. Your system is the collection of daily habits that will get you there” — James Clear

Your WHY isn’t strong enough

Some of my past goals didn’t have a strong enough why behind them.

Things like having a sports car, having the latest clothes and gadgets. The why behind all these wants was just to look cool in the eyes of my friends and family.

I realised that if I set aim at a goal that’s big, the WHY has to be just as big as well.

In my late twenties, I had a goal of reaching a 6 figure income, but my why wasn’t deep enough. So when things got really hard, I didn’t have enough motivation to keep going.

It was when I found out that my wife got pregnant that my reasons for earning 6 figures got stronger. 2 years after the birth of my child is when I finally hit the goal.

There were a lot of obstacles and failures, but my WHY kept me in the game.

“When you know your why, you can endure any how”

— Victor Frankl

Photo by Shutterstock.com

You have limiting beliefs

It’s much harder to take action when you have a strong limiting belief that paralyzes you.

When I was 19, I took a job sales job knocking on doors of houses during the night to sell their telephone plans.

At first, I was excited to learn how to make sales. After the two days of training, we were sent to the field. I was dropped off in a van and was given a few streets to knock on the doors of total strangers.

I froze on my first attempt. I couldn’t even knock on the door. I stood there for 10 minutes as my mind raced with limiting beliefs.

I heard my mind say, “you’re not a salesperson, just quit and do something easy”, “sales are for extroverts, and you’re not one of them!”, “This was a terrible idea. What were you thinking”?

Sad to say that I quit the job the very next day.

Seventeen years later, I became one of the top salespeople in the recruitment industry. Yes, it took me that long to change my limiting beliefs.

It doesn’t have to be this way for you. There are countless ways to remove limiting beliefs. The internet back then wasn’t as good as it is now.

“The only limits you have are the limits that you believe”

— Wayne Dyer