You may have many things you want to achieve, but some things stop you from achieving your goals. These things are mostly your behavior and shortcomings. Only a few are external.
If you want to achieve these goals, you must ensure that the things that can stop you from achieving your goals are far from you. The more you keep doing them, the farther you will be from your goals.
Focus only on what is essential and leave every distraction behind. You know that someone will achieve great heights if they actively avoid distractions.
15 Things That Stop You From Achieving Your Goals
Below are some things that can stop you from achieving your goals. Do well to avoid them.
1. Fear Of Failure
The fear of failure is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal. This is because this can be such a crippling experience. Yet, many people who fear failure sit back and watch life pass by them.
All of them with the excuse and question of ages. “What if I fail?” Erin Hanson has the answer to this question in her famous poem: There is freedom waiting for you in the breezes of the sky. And you ask, “What if I fall?” Oh! But my darling, what if you fly?
The truth is that life and progress can be scary sometimes. You look at your dreams, which seem so gigantic that you wonder how you will even pull them off. You could also have failed a lot, so you are afraid to try again.
But we all know the story of Thomas Edison, who invented the light bulb. We all know he failed a dozen times before finally getting the design right. So if you are failing, that means you are trying and should keep trying.
Don’t allow the fear of failure to keep you from getting to that greatness you have always dreamed of. Always remember that nothing good comes easy. If you fall, rise, dust yourself and keep going.
2. Procrastination
Procrastination is the grave in which opportunities are buried. Many people have lost many life-changing opportunities because they refused to act immediately on their goals. Why push it to tomorrow if you can do it today?
Why do you have to postpone your flight to greatness? You have many books to study for your exams, but you binge-watch TV shows on Netflix, not knowing that procrastination is the thief of time. You might think you have time, but time flies.
It doesn’t wait up for anyone. Procrastination is one of those things that stop you from achieving your goals. This is because it keeps telling you you can do it some other time.
Some people are such brilliant planners. They know how to set up plans; they have such great ideas and have successfully put them down in writing with no missing details.
They have acquired so much knowledge that they know what to do in every situation. But the problem is they don’t take action. As a result, many plans and knowledge are wasted because they do not want to put in the work.
Does this describe you? Then start doing something. The only remedy for procrastination is doing something immediately.
3. Inconsistency
This is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goals. It makes you blow hot today and cold the next day.
To accomplish any goal in life, you must be consistent. You have to show up every day.
You must keep showing up daily because you can never tell when your big break will come. Unfortunately, due to a lack of consistency, many people miss out on great rewards for their effort.
Through consistency, you get the jobs done and meet your goals faster. For example, imagine a building project going on, and the workers come in just two times a month. When would they finish the building?
They must come to the site daily and work to achieve their goals. Therefore, consistency is needed even in your personal goals. For example, imagine you want to save 500 dollars in one month; you can plan to save $ 150 in a week.
This weekly deposit will help you achieve your goal at the end of the month.
4. Perfectionism
We were always advised to be content with where we are in our journey and then strive for more. This is because perfectionism can set in. Many people are not moving forward in life because they are perfectionists.
And that is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal. Nobody is born grown. There is a lot of time between conception and when a baby is finally birthed. And when that baby is finally birthed, they grow.
They take baby steps before they start running. No one came to this earth fully formed. And this is the lesson perfectionists need to pick up. Everything cannot be perfect; you cannot be perfect. All you need to do is try your best.
Being a perfectionist is such a heavy burden to bear. You become miserable and make others around you miserable as well. Rome was not built in a day.
If you want to be perfect, start doing those imperfect things. From there, you can grow to perfection. Of course, your first step must not be excellent; it just needs to be taken.
5. Distractions
We live in an era of many distractions. There is noise everywhere, and you rarely find peace to meditate and think. A noisy adolescent neighbor blasts music off their loudspeakers and loud shouts on the road to work or school.
If it is not the noise from humans and their toys, it is the distraction of the media. TVs and social media are top of the list of distractions.
A survey carried out by Enterprise Service Management (ESM) surveys found that 73% of youths are distracted by social media. And this is not surprising since everyone is looking at their devices with no room to connect to another person.
Distraction is one of the things that stop you from reaching your goal. How much time do you spend on social media mindlessly scrolling?
How much time do you spend watching TV when you are supposed to write that book or solve those physics questions? Do you spend more time playing video games instead of handling that project?
The more you let yourself be distracted by the world around you, the less you achieve. Sometimes, distractions are humans; it could be your friends who discourage you from pursuing your goals or those who want to party, club and smoke all the time.
You need to identify those friends who don’t teach you anything positive and steer clear of them if you’re going to achieve your goal.
6. You Have No Actionable Plans To Achieve Your Goals
One of the mistakes many people make with their goals is that they have no plans to achieve them. So, do you want to be top of your class? How are you going to make that happen?
What will you do to ensure that you achieve your goal? You run in circles when you have no plan or don’t know the course of action to take. It is like having a destination in mind but not knowing the route that leads there.
You have a saving target or goal of $50,000 in a year. How do you intend to achieve this? What will you be doing daily and consistently to get this done? What percentage of your income will you set aside daily, weekly or monthly to complete this?
You want to lose 50 pounds in two months, which is excellent. But what are you going to do daily to arrive at that goal? One thing that stops you from achieving your goal is not having any plans on what you will do to reach your goals.
To learn how to set actionable plans for success, read the post about it by clicking the link here.
7. Unrealistic Goals
Many people approach goal-setting through the lens of wishful thinking. They think goal-setting is like making monthly and daily affirmations or running into a genie and asking for three things. But that is not what goal-setting is all about.
When you want to set your goals, it has to be challenging and realistic. Setting unrealistic goals are just a waste of time. For example, imagine setting a goal of being the next King of England when you have no royal blood.
One of the things that stop you from achieving your goal is that you set unrealistic targets.
For example, if your goal is to start a business that brings in $7,000 in profit monthly in the next three months when you don’t even have the capital, to begin with. Unfortunately, that goal will not work because you are not being realistic.
8. Lack Of Accountability
One of the things that plague many people is that they are not accountable. How do you know if you met your goal if you don’t perform regular accountability checks? This will lead to your goals crashing even before you reach them.
For instance, you started this small business selling snacks downtown, and your busy time is the evening. So you sell your snacks for five hours (6 pm to 11 pm), then close and go home.
The next thing you do determines if that business will thrive. But, unfortunately, some people start spending profit without properly considering how the sales went.
You have to take stock of how many snacks you sold and check if you made a profit. Then you take out what you need to restock, take care of yourself, and pay the rest into the bank.
But when you do not do this, you will not know whether your business is making a profit or loss. So, you must keep yourself accountable. This accountability will let you know your best buyers and determine when to scale up.
9. Giving Up Too Soon
Many people do not understand that there is no promise or guarantee for an easy life. There will always be challenges that will present themselves on the way to success.
If there are no challenges, then the journey and the story you will tell about the journey afterwards wouldn’t be exciting. So you have to accept that challenges are part of life.
You cannot run from it; you cannot escape it. It is there for every person. Big, small, wealthy and poor. So, when you meet these challenges, the first thing that should cross your mind is that you can do it.
Albert Einstein once said: Life is like riding a bicycle. To keep balance, you must keep moving. So what are some of those things you had given up on? What things did you try tackling that felt too much, so you abandoned them?
Go back to them and look at them one after the other. Start by working on each of them. Then, when you have a setback, pick yourself up, learn from it, and start a new course.
10. Focusing On The Result Instead Of The Process
It is usual for you to have eyes on your goal. After all, the goal encouraged you to start the process in the first place.
But one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal is focusing on the result without paying attention to the process.
The truth is that it is the process that births the result. Not the other way around. When you try to reach the goal without due process, you end up failing.
One other reason why you should focus on the process instead of the result is that sometimes the result can look large, and that will discourage you. But when you take it step by step, you begin to master the process and eventually reach the goal.
Think about a football team whose goal is to score more goals than the opponent. The game does not start with one side with a goal in the opponent’s net. Instead, it begins with moving the ball around team members until they reach the opponent’s goalpost.
If you are with the ball and focus on reaching the goal, your opponent might take the ball away from you. Your focus as a team member is to ensure the ball gets to a teammate with a better chance of scoring.
Start from where you are and gently progress. Then, focus on your next activity, your next move and ensure you execute it well. Looking too far ahead is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal.
11. No Mentorship
Many people in our generation today think that success is a personal affair. They believe they can sit somewhere and plot their way to success without help. But this is not true. For you to achieve your goal, you have to submit to mentorship.
When you don’t, you make mistakes you would have avoided if you had been better informed. In mentorship, you learn strategies that don’t work and those that work.
You can avoid your mentor or coach’s mistakes and become a better version with mentorship. What is your goal? To be a financial powerhouse? Who is your model? Who is your financial coach?
Who are you looking up to and copying proven strategies from? It will do you a lot of good if you stop pushing through life based on your instinct and knowledge alone. Instead, rest on the shoulders of those who have gone far and excelled.
In addition to having a mentor, invest in knowledge. Read books along the line of your goal. For example, read books about improving the mind if you want to be mentally strong.
There are credible people online; you can follow their tips and strengthen your mental strength.
12. Using The Wrong Strategy
Sometimes, the things that stop you from achieving your goals are things you would not have expected. One of those is using the wrong strategy. So, having a plan and making a strategy is not enough.
You have to ensure the strategy you are using will work. If the process is not working, it is as good as not having any strategy.
For example, let us assume you want to save a specific amount of money every month, say $1000, and you have this steak house that always tempts you near your home.
So, after your salary is paid every month, you move $1000 to your savings account only to take money from there to buy steak. You have a savings plan quite alright, but it is failing you.
So, instead of that strategy, why not try something new? First, open a fixed deposit account without a credit card. Then, set up an automated debit on your salary account.
So, once your salary is paid, $1000 is automatically debited into your fixed account. Since you cannot easily access the money, you’ll learn to keep your appetite in check. So, if your strategy is not working, change it.
13. Lack Of Motivation
There are moments when you are down and out, and nothing seems to make sense anymore. Unfortunately, days like that often come, especially when you are yet to break even with your goals.
You may have tried doing a 30-day challenge and broke it on day 17. This can be painful and can make you lose all the strength you have in you and cause a lack of motivation, and it is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal.
It is one thing that makes many people lose heart and give up. But you are not going to give up. You have to find ways to motivate yourself.
One of the ways to find motivation is surrounding yourself with people of like mind. For example, when you belong to a community of go-getters, you are encouraged to go again when you see others getting up after a fall.
It is important to note that external motivation may not always be available. And that is when you have to start motivating yourself.
Look for those reasons that made you start working on achieving your goals in the first place. Then, let them serve as a motivation to you to keep going.
14. Taking Shortcuts
Shortcuts are appealing as they get the job done faster. But at what cost? One of the significant things a shortcut does is to reduce the value of the goal you are chasing.
It cuts you off from the process you are supposed to learn from. Taking shortcuts does nothing for you, development-wise, which is why it is discouraged.
When you constantly take shortcuts, you show that you do not have patience, are desperate, and these are character flaws that are detrimental to your growth. Anything that is of value takes time. Rome was not built in a day.
Take a look at your mentor or life coach. If you listen carefully, you can hear tales of humble beginnings. Success, lasting success, does not come through shortcuts. You have to let the process transform you.
Having goals and aspirations and being hungry for success is excellent, but you must pay the price for this success with time and patience.
Don’t look at shortcuts; commit to developing yourself and going one step at a time, and before you know it, you have reached your goal.
15. Improper Prioritization
The ability to prioritize correctly is a skill you need in all spheres of life. For example, you need it in your academics to know what to focus on at a particular moment.
It is also required in the corporate world so you can attend to the highly time-sensitive tasks first. Unfortunately, improper prioritization is one of the things that stop you from achieving your goal.
You tend to focus on the less important while the highly important get unattended. Everyone is big on prioritizing tasks because prioritization is one of the foundations of productivity.
Since humans can only do one thing at a time, it is necessary to pick tasks based on their importance.
So, if you have a baby shower to attend and an exam to prepare for, you choose to prepare for the exam and see the baby some other time. That is prioritization.
So, look at your goals and what you spend time on. Is there anything you are supposed to be doing at the moment? What are the goals that are time bound? Are you paying attention to them?
Always plan your day, week or month. Place your non-negotiable tasks first, and refuse to be interrupted by anyone from doing those tasks.
What Things Prevent Me From Achieving My Goals In Life?
You may wonder, “What things prevent me from achieving my goals in life?” Here are some of those things below:
1. Excuses: Sometimes, what holds you back is too many excuses. You have to realize that those who watch the weather will not work. There will never be a perfect time to start doing what you are meant to do.
So, start now. Quit blaming another person for your misfortune. Instead, learn to take responsibility for your life and know that you are the only one solely responsible for how your life will turn out.
2. Being with The Wrong People: Who are the people surrounding you? What kind of friends do you have? Your friends are proof of what you are. If you have friends who are not interested in making anything meaningful from their lives, you won’t either.
Peer pressure and friendships are some of the most potent forces in the universe. If you roll with the wrong crowd, you will soon change and become like that.
3. Lack of Discipline: If you think achieving your goals will be a walk in the park, you are in for a rude shock. It is not every day that you feel motivated and energized to tackle your goals.
But discipline makes you get up each day and face them. If you don’t have this discipline, your goals will remain unachieved.
What Might Stop Me From Achieving My Goals?
You probably ask, “What might stop me from achieving my goals?” One thing that might stop you from achieving your goal is your mindset. If you doubt your abilities, you will gain less and less.
This is because, subconsciously, your brain has given up and resigned to fate. Therefore, to achieve your goals, you must first see them as doable.
What Are The Barriers To Achieving Your Career Goals?
So, what are the barriers to achieving your career goals? Here are some of the possible barriers in your way:
1. Lack Of Improvement
Sometimes in an organization, many old employees complain that they are not being promoted, but someone who joined recently has been promoted. Well, for you to excel in your career, you have to be dedicated to self-development.
Do you research ways you can do your job better? Are you attending classes and seminars? Do you have relevant industry certifications? These are what counts to your excelling in your career.
2. Inability To Balance Career And Family
Being a parent, wife, husband, and team leader at work can be challenging. Sometimes, the demand of family cannot let you explore other options for growth that may be available elsewhere.
When you don’t balance your family and career, you sacrifice your career for your family.
3. Introduction Of Technology
The advent of new technology can erupt the industry and make it hard for you to reach your goals. This is especially hard when your line of work is where the technology is being used.
Conclusion
Now that you know some things that can hinder you from achieving your goals, which one would you drop? If you cannot make these adjustments in your habit, it may be hard for you to achieve your goals.
However, it is vital to remember that what you eventually get is what you worked for. So, if you want a life full and rich with achieved goals, you must work.
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