4 Reasons Why You're Not Achieving Your Goals
You've got goals - big ones, small ones, all kinds of them. When the end of the month comes and you're assessing your progress, you are constantly frustrated that you've got no progress to report.
Keep reading to find out 4 reasons why you're not achieving your goals and what you can do about it.
I’m gonna share 4 common struggles that I hear people offer up as to why their goals aren’t happening. But I’m not gonna leave you there! I’m going to propose a first step that you can take for each one so that struggle doesn’t keep holding you back, sound good?
1. I don’t have enough time.
Okay I’m gonna be blunt here with this one. I can’t accept this. Listen, when I started Hustle Sanely, I was working 3 other jobs and in graduate school. You hear this all the time but we really are all busy. We choose what goes on our schedule. We allow our to-do lists to become out of control long. You can’t blame that on anyone else because you are grown and you can say no. I tell y’all this often but saying YES to one thing is saying NO to another.
You have enough time, you’ve just got to be a better steward of your time. You can do that in one of two ways: do less by decluttering your schedule (which looks like deleting things or delegating them aka asking for help) or become more efficient so what you’re doing doesn’t take as much time (aka stop spending 3 hours on a task that you can finish in 2).
You are an adult so you need to practice being a better manager of your priorities (because our priorities are a direct reflection of how we spend our time).
First step: Take one thing off your schedule for a month. Yep. Just one thing for one month. Maybe it’s watching TV after work. Or maybe it’s going to Target without a true purpose. Or maybe it’s scrolling Instagram between the hours of 7 PM and 10 PM.Now what you do with those new found time gaps is up to you. But this is good practice for learning that you are the one who allows things to make their way onto your schedule.
2. I don’t know how to do X.
X here is fill in the blank. Whatever you’re saying you don't know how to do. Have you heard of this thing called Google? It’s a free website with, I don’t know, probably millions of resources that you can access by typing something in the search bar. CRAZY RIGHT? This may have been a more valid reason to not do something before the Internet but, girl, we have the means to hop on Google and figure out how to do stuff these days.
I mean I feel like this goes without saying but we’ve got to use discernment and filter out garbage that is present on the Internet but you still have the opportunity to find a lot of good, solid, and free resources if you search wisely. I mean I learned how to do everything I do in Hustle Sanely because of Google and YouTube. How to make digital products, how to start a podcast, how to start a paper planner business. I’m a master Googler.
Here’s a real life example of something that I used to make an excuse about - reading my Bible. Y’all know, if you follow me on Instagram, that I’m a follower of Jesus. But I used to dread reading the Bible because I constantly told myself, “I don’t know how to read the Bible. It’s too hard and too confusing.” So I just wouldn’t even try to read it. I would literally sit there and tell myself the Bible is too hard to read WITHOUT EVEN TRYING TO READ IT.
One day it just hit me (I’m gonna credit that to lots of prayer and the Holy Spirit) that I wasn’t even trying to read my Bible and it’s definitely hard to understand something that you haven’t even opened, right? So now I choose to prayerfully read my Bible daily and I’m blown away by how not as complicated it is as I thought it would be. And guess what? If I do have a question or want to dig a little deeper into certain scripture, I can….GOOGLE IT! Or grab a commentary or something.
K so you might not know how to do something but you can surely figure it out, okay?
First step: Figure out the biggest roadblock when it comes to not knowing what you're trying to pursue. Get specific - what don’t you know about what you’re trying to accomplish? Now go type that in the Google search bar.
3. I don’t have enough energy.
Now this one can go a lot of different ways. Little background - I used to work as a certified personal trainer. I worked one on one with clients to help them achieve health + fitness goals. If they showed up to a session, whether it was a 6 AM or a 6 PM session, and they were just exhausted to their core, we would sit down and try to determine why. So I’m going to ask you some of the questions I used to ask my clients who claimed they didn’t have enough energy to work toward their health + fitness goals?
- Are you getting 7-8 hours of sleep per night?
- Are you drinking enough water?
- Are you fueling your body with nutritious food?
- Are you diversely exercising (as in cardio, strength training, and stretching) 4-5 days per week?
- Are you making it a priority to fill yourself mentally and spiritually every day?
- Are you leaving enough time in your schedule to decompress between tasks and wind down at the end of the day?
If you answer yes to all of these and you are still struggling with energy, I recommend going to talk to a medical professional.
If you answered no to any of them, I’d start making changes there.
Little disclaimer: You need to know the difference between being unmotivated and being exhausted.
I saw this quote by someone named Mike Millner - now I have no idea who this guy is - but someone I know reposted this quote on Instagram stories and it’s applicable here:
“I want this thing, but I’m just not motivated...what should I do?
Same thing you do when you want a paycheck but you aren’t motivated to go to work… You get to work anyway!
Motivation is never required. Action breeds motivation.”
First step: Choose one of the above areas from the list we just went over to improve in and stick to the improvements for one month then reassess your energy levels.
4. I don’t have enough money.
This is valid. Like you actually might not have the actual funds to do something that you need to do in order to reach your big goal. Now I want to make it very clear that I am a believer in being good stewards with our finances. I know some “coaches” tell you to invest your last dollar into their program so that you can get the knowledge you need to break past limiting beliefs, la de dah. That’s not me. If it comes down to your last dollar and you are trying to feed your kid or buy a program on the Internet, I’d say feed your kid.
I’m also a believer that money is a tool and a resource but it doesn’t define our worth as people.
I just finished reading “Dream Big” by Bob Goff and on page 111 he says, “If it doesn’t seem like you can afford your ambition, get on Craigslist and start buying it a piece at a time.” He goes on to tell a story about how he wanted to start an airline but couldn’t afford a plane so he started building one piece by piece. Now it took longer but eventually he had the airplane. You might have to start scrappy and that’s not a bad thing. You're still starting.
Hustle Sanely is a great example. I have wanted to create a paper planner since I was a little girl. But it’s a financial investment to bulk order a product like a planner. When I first started Hustle Sanely, it was not in our budget for us to do a paper planner 2 years ago. But I had a laptop and Microsoft PowerPoint so I figured out how to make digital planners because there was way less overhead involved. I did that for a year and a half and now we have the funds from the digital planners to fund the production of a Hustle Sanely paper planner.
What do you already have and how can you use it to take a step toward your big dream?
You might also consider thinking of how you can use your skills to create an income to support the goal you’re trying to fund. Maybe you can babysit or clean homes or be a Shipt shopper. You can do something that isn’t necessarily your dream or goal to fund your dream or goal. Make sense?
First step: Look just below your big dream and determine a stepping stone that you can stand on right now.
Listen, if you want something to be different, you’ve got to do something different. It sounds so simple and honestly it is - we make making changes so much more difficult than it needs to be. Decide what you’re going to change and do it.
It doesn’t have to be a huge leap, it can be a slight pivot at a time. But don’t stand where you are complaining that you’re not where you want to be if you’re not doing anything to make a move.
If you enjoyed this post, tune into episode 044 of The Hustle Sanely Podcast to listen into this topic!
