Your goals may be interfering with your success!
Hmm, interesting thought. Is it possible that the goals you have set for yourself are actually getting in the way of your own success? If you have more than one goal that you are working on achieving at the same time, the answer could be yes. Having multiple goals could result in contradictory challenges in order to achieve those goals. When you attempt to have it all at the same time, sometimes you get none of it. Therefore, it’s important to have a clear idea of what your goals are and what the extenuating consequences (both positive and negative) might be of reaching that goal.
Most people don’t set goals at all. And those that do, generally put as much thought into their goals as they would into what to watch on TV. That might be fine if they have a singular goal and every decision they make is based on whether or not that decision will move them closer or further away from achieving that goal. Usually, though, if you have a singular goal in mind and you haven’t taken the time to work through the entire goal setting process, you also aren’t making every decision that leads you to your success.
If you are reading this, though, odds are you have multiple goals. You probably have goals for your business or professional life, your family, your finances, health and fitness and community, just to name a few. Let’s look at some typical examples in each of these areas:
- Business – Make X amount of money.
- Family – Spend more time with children and spouse.
- Finances – Pay off debt.
- Health/Fitness – Lose x lbs.
- Community – Volunteer at least x hours per month.
On the surface, these all look like great goals. The challenge comes in when you start to outline the action steps involved in reaching success in each of these goals. Here’s a great example. Let’s imagine your fitness goals consist of losing weight AND getting stronger/more toned. When you understand the mechanics of the human body, you know that, in order to get stronger, you have to feed it more of the right kind of fuel. That often means increasing your calorie intake. Now, it is possible that, simply by switching to the right kind of fuel (high protein/low carbohydrates) to build muscle, you will naturally lose weight even by increasing your calorie intake. However, you would not lose as much weight because muscle weighs more than fat. As you gain muscle and lose fat, you might actually GAIN weight. The choices you make for one goal will be contrary to the choices you would need to make to achieve the other goal. Therefore, your goals would be getting in the way of your success, keeping you in an endless tennis match of back and forth decisions.
Let’s look back at our goals above. There is a very good possibility that, in order to make more money in your business, you must first invest more into the business. This could put you further into debt, which would be contrary to your financial goal of paying off debt. In addition, despite the fads of the “Four Hour Work Week” all highly successful business people put in long hours most days of the week/month. If your focus and attention is required on your business 14 to 16 hours a day in order to increase the amount of money your business brings in, it leaves less time to spend with your family or in your community.
By making decisions that first focus on your business goals and then on your family goals and then on your… you are ultimately taking the focus away from the other goals in that moment. It would be much like saying you want to visit Oregon, California, Main and Florida on the same family vacation. You set out for Oregon but then realize that the next road will more easily lead to Florida so you take it. Then you get to another interchange that says Florida – 500 miles, Maine – 250 miles so you decide to head off to Maine. Ultimately, you’ve spent your entire vacation driving around aimlessly without seeing any of your destinations.
Action Step
A better way to create the success you want to achieve is to rank your goals. For example, you might place the most emphasis on your business goals, knowing that making more money may ultimately lead to achieving some of your other goals as well. Here’s an example:
- Business – Make X amount of money.
- Health/Fitness – Lose x lbs.
- Family – Spend more time with children and spouse.
- Finances – Pay off debt.
- Community – Volunteer at least x hours per month.
Now that you have ranked your goal priorities, you can set about creating your action plans. First work on the action plan for your primary goal. Once you have completed that, work on an action plan for your secondary goal. Here’s the key, though. As you work on all subsequent goals, you MUST ask yourself this question:
Will this action interfere with any of the higher ranking goals I have set?
If the answer is yes, then that is an action that will get in the way of your ultimate success and must be eliminated from your action plan. If you can’t come up with any action steps that won’t interfere with higher ranking goals, you may have to consider rewriting or eliminating that goal for the time being.
[Tweet Choosing to focus on multiple, contradictory goals is a sure way to make sure that your goals get in the way of your success.]