We are nearing the end of the year, very fast, and the days seem to get shorter and shorter time wise – running into each other. To top it all, we have this internal clock that is asking of us to look back on the year and what we have achieved.
Often this will lead us to become hard on ourselves and feeling disappointed because we have not achieved our goals.
I know this routine, but too well. We start putting pressure on ourselves to accomplish what we have not achieved yet and we start loading the stress. We start telling ourselves that we are failures and not good enough. In that instant you start feeding all these limiting beliefs, you start feeling the stress and anxiety load. You are frustrated with yourself and you no longer encourage yourself to show up every day and keep going towards your desired outcome. You become impatient with the people around you, which ads to the cycle as you now feel bad because you are so bad tempered. And the wheel has started spinning.
If this is you, and you feel desponded in setting your goals for the new year, then I want to ask you to change your approach and rather start looking at your lessons.
What can you learn from your “failed goals”?
1. Ask yourself: What was the lesson behind every “failed goal”? Every time we experience failure, hurt, doubt, etc. it is because there was a lesson behind it. You experience those emotions, because it has triggered certain "pressure points" in your beliefs. Did you stop to learn the lesson? It could be anything from being kinder to yourself, setting your boundaries on other things, so that you can have the time or money to achieve your desired goal. Even to the point of, is this really my goal or am I doing it for other people?
2. Was the goal formulated in a way that will keep your focus on your outcome? Do you identify with your goals? If your goal is not true to you and you set it to please other people, chances are you are never going to achieve it. If you cannot identify with the goal, where will you find the motivation to see it through? We always want to keep our families happy and we are in competition with who knows who, to always be better than the next person. Who is the next person? What do you want? Know yourself.
3. What is your trade-off to achieve a goal that is not in line with your true self and what you want from life? No matter what we do, there is always a trade-off if the goal does not serve us. What do you sacrifice in time and money to achieve the goal? What do you sacrifice of yourself? If you do not identify with your goal, the price of the goal might be too high, and you will lack motivation to see it through. That is why we often have the Monday Blues, because we are getting up to go to a job, to receive the money, to pay for something, we do not identify with. What is your trade-off?
4. Was your goal big enough? I know from experience that goals can be too small, but never too big. It is a matter of how you approach the process towards your goal. Are you attempting to eat the watermelon in one bite, or are you going to enjoy it slice by slice? Big goals get “cut to smaller bite sizes”, but no goal is ever too big.
5. Be honest with yourself and implement your newfound information to your future goals. If you are not prepared to be honest and admit what “the driving force” is in your so-called failure of your goal, then rather do not write goals. We are here to learn and from learning we should grow. You can only change that which you own. Own your “failure” so you can become successful.
We come from a society where we focus on the negative. We are constantly living in fear of failure. If you can take one thing from 2019, then I want to ask you to take the lesson of owning up to your true self – your true desire.
Now is the time to make a change to tomorrow.
Sue Leppan
Transformation Life Coach
NLP Practitioner
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