Why You Never Achieve Your Goals (And How To Change That)
Setting goals is easy. We've all set hundreds, if not thousands of them, over the course of our life. But why is it that so few of the goals that we set ever become a reality?
One of the most commonly credited reasons is the sheer busyness of our daily life. We claim that if we had more free time, we'd undoubtedly spend that time actualizing our dreams. But when life provides us with some of that seemingly precious resource, which I'm a firm believer happens to all of us far more often than we are willing to admit, we instead opt to use it otherwise.
Another commonly recognized reason, that many prominent personal development figures have made a fair living off of correcting, is the type of goals that we set. Terms like "actionable steps" and "reward-based models" are thrown around as essential to pretty well anything we're serious about accomplishing. But I've seen far too many properly concocted goals still wither away for me to believe that to be the true underlying issue.
Here is my take on the real reason why so many of the goals we set in the modern world struggle to become a reality in both video (1:22 runtime) and written (2-3 minute read) form:
Plain and simple, to me, the main problem lies not in the goals that we set, but instead in the mindset we have towards how quickly or easily they are supposed to become a reality.
We live in a world that not only expects, but DEMANDS things instantaneously. Don't believe me? Take a second to honestly rate on a scale from 1-10 how quick you are to get frustrated or impatient with the following things:
A slow internet connection
Someone who cuts you off in traffic
The time between when your plane lands and when you can exit the plane
Ads before or during a YouTube video
Slow service at a restaurant
When you take a step back, all of the above mentioned experiences truly are first world problems, yet we complain about them as if they carry the capacity to end our lives if not corrected.
Need further proof? Think of the way that you typically consume social media. Do you not realize that things such as snaps and stories are as short as they are not because of technological limitations but instead because that's how small our attention span has become. We need things to captivate or provide us with something of value within seconds or they've lost us in favour of the next available thing a simple tap or scroll unlocks.
It's this mentality that more and more of us are subconsciously adopting into our goals and work ethic.
You see, we're setting goals like we always have, but rather than valuing and putting into practice traits like patience, persistence, hard work, and belief -all of which the greatest achievers in this world embodied relentlessly -we're expecting success in 15 seconds or less.
So if you really want that "killer" body, that successful business, or to spend that entire year abroad, stop expecting it to happen as easily as it may have for that one stupid kid you see all over YouTube, or for that one lucky woman on the news, and instead FOR ONCE give your goal the chance it was hoping for when you first set it.
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