You Will Never Reach Your Goals

Whether it’s short-term goals, long-term goals, personal goals, or business goals, you’ll never reach your goals unless you are clearly and deeply aware of five critical factors.

The problem with traditional goal-setting is that it usually begins with a statement or declaration of desire, want, or need, and it lacks the diligent work required to be successful. At its best, some logical and critical thinking might be applied to the actions, tasks and steps required to move you towards a goal; but the whole process lacks the depth that these critical factors require to ensure success.

As a result, this traditional goal-setting method represents a huge ‘gap’. It is a shallow effort that fails to warrant respect, because it ultimately lacks integrity and real authenticity.

It lacks ‘Skin in the Game’. And it lacks all of the tactile physical and emotional experiential learning and engagement gained by doing. Consider these analogies:

• Talking about music, versus playing it.
• Studying how to fly an airplane, versus actually flying a plane.
• Reading about leadership versus stepping into a leadership role.
• Being a critic of anyone who is on the field doing, versus you’re sitting safely in the stands, being judgmental.

Traditional goal-setting is the less serious or ‘lite’ version of real goal leadership and achievement.

Now that we’ve provided some context to the title of this article, ‘You Will Never Reach Your Goals’, let’s look at the Five Critical Factors for successfully reaching your goals.

Your success is dependent on you having the deep wisdom necessary that you have gained by living and experiencing each of these five critical factors at the worst of times, and at the best of times.

1. Why – easier said than done, discovering your deep whys will become what drives your motivation, commitment, and willpower. It will become the thing that you fight for.
2. Sacrifice – a key question everyone forgets to consistently ask, ‘what am I willing to give or give up to reach my goal’? It’s the consequence of creating a change and accepting risk.
3. Go/No-Go – here’s a critical distinction, its not just about being clear on the requirements of a goal, it will never happen without executing the go/no-goes.
4. Tolerance – this is the flip-side of ‘Why’, and it’s that deep awareness and understanding of your capacity to tolerate the hardship and the risk/fear of failure when stepping into that zone of discomfort.
5. Reflection – we’re talking reflection at a forensic level here. Measuring performance in terms of small wins and losses, their cause & effect, modifying tactics, asking for help, and celebrating the lessons, the milestones met, and the successes.

Be warned, knowing these five critical factors is just the first step, because simply knowing them won’t be enough. Your awareness must go beyond knowing these five critical factors intellectually, to include your direct experience of them, both emotionally and physically.

The Five Critical Factor approach to goal-setting provides the breadth and the depth of diligence required to provide a high degree of certainty in reaching your goals without all the stress of uncertainty. And it will give you the opportunity to abandon or modify a goal at anytime with the comfort and pride that you put in the thorough effort required into being the masterful architect of achieving your dreams and desires.

To learn more about how to build your capacity and increase your level of mastery to reach your goals through improved self-leadership, click here.

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