When you have a goal, you of course focus on making progress to achieve that goal. Or are you? Sadly, the reality often looks different. It’s challenging, difficult at times to stay motivated, do the work and take action. Often progress is slow or even non-existent. In this blog post we’re going to explore 8 reasons why you’re not making progress on your goals.
1. Lack of Clarity
We all set goals, but most of us set vague and broad goals that aren’t clear such as I want to read more, I want to increase my savings, I want to eat more healthy and so on.
But what does it mean to read more? How much money do you want to save when you say I want to increase my savings? How much weight do you want to lose or what is a healthy weight you want to reach?
Setting clear defined goals is half the battle won. It’s the starting point of your goal-setting journey, the beginning of working towards your dream life and making positive changes in your life.
Getting this right from the beginning is key and crucial to staying on track and making progress.
2. Procrastination
The definition of procrastination is: “to keep delaying something that must be done, often because it is unpleasant or boring” (Cambridge Dictionary).
Procrastination is the result of you limiting beliefs and roadblocks. Therefore, dealing with what is holding you back should be your first priority and is absolutely necessary to keep moving forward.
I wasted more than a year creating my coaching business. I was procrastinating for months and months, because I didn’t belief in myself and was scared of potential consequences.
Once I acknowledged that I was procrastinating, putting of what I knew I had to do, I was able to move forward. I identified what was holding me back, addressed it and finally moved on.
3. You’re WHY isn’t strong enough
Your WHY is the driving force, the reason for doing what you’re doing. The real reason for working on your goals, why your putting so much time, effort and energy in.
If you’re WHY isn’t strong enough, that means it’s likely that you’re not 100% committed to your goal.
It’s easy to set goals, but if you’re not standing 100% behind them and really, really want to achieve them, then of course you’re setting yourself up for failure straight away. You wholeheartedly have to stand behind them. In other words, your WHY needs to be strong enough. Otherwise there is no point in trying. You’d just be wasting time and energy.
4. Lack of self-belief
Lacking self-belief is a huge reason why you’re not making progress on your goals. In a nutshell it means you don’t belief you can actually achieve your goals.
If you belief it’s not possible, it’s highly unlikely to move forward and you won’t be making progress. I mean, why would you put energy, effort and time into something that you deep down inside belief not to be achievable and possible?
You need to belief that one day you’re going to hit your goals. That it’s absolutely possible for you.
Related post: How To Go From Can’t To Can With A Possibility Mindset
5. Limiting beliefs
Limiting beliefs, those thoughts you belief to be absolutely true, are a big part of you playing it small and staying stuck.
If you believe with all your heart that you’re uncapable, you’re too shy and not outgoing, you don’t have the strength, knowledge, skills, energy, expertise, what ever it is – you won’t be able to move forward, make progress and achieve your goals. You won’t move out of your shell and comfort zone.
Addressing those limiting beliefs should be on top of your list, if making progress is what you really want. Identify, acknowledge and reframe those limiting beliefs to make advancements.
6. You don’t do the needle moving tasks
You can work on your goals and not be making progress. This happens when you work on the tasks with no impact instead of the needle moving tasks, the tasks that actually make a difference and get you closer.
Insignificant tasks often still make you feel like you’ve done something, like you’ve been productive, but they are just procrastination in disguise.
You can do research, catch up on your latest podcast episode related to your goals or do a bit here and there that feels relevant to your goals, but not actually be making progress. The reason for this is because you’re not doing the impactful work and take the right action.
7. You’re inconsistent
Does this sound familiar? You’re all fired up on Monday about your goals and are actually taking some action. You feel on top of the world, because you’ve done something that day.
Tuesday comes and you’ve got a ton to do so can’t work on your goal that day. On Wednesday, you’re meeting a friend after work. Now it’s Thursday and you’ve not done much since Monday to make progress on your goals. Your energy is diminishing by the day.
On Friday, you’re squeezing in some time to work on your goals, but get distracted after 30 min by the cute cat videos your partner is watching next to you.
If you’re doing a bit of work today, nothing for the next four days, a bit over the next week and then nothing for the next two weeks, you can’t expect much. Simply, because you haven’t done much.
Taking action consistently will get you results and helps you to build the habits you need to get stuff done and make progress.
8. Feeling overwhelmed and stressed
Goals are supposed to be challenging and feel a tiny bit out of reach, at least big life goals. However, this can also make working on them feel daunting, stressful and overwhelming.
I mean where do you begin, what do you do first and what do you do at all? All these questions come up that stir up feelings of stress and overwhelm.
When this happens, we often go into flight or freeze mode and stop working on our goals or procrastinate the heck out of it.
Here you have it, the 8 reasons why you’re not making progress on your goals. But, even though progress might be slow, know that you are on the right path. And no matter how slow progress might be, I want you to remember this – Any progress is progress, no matter how big or small the progress is.
If you found this post on 8 Reasons Why You’re Not Making Progress On Your Goals helpful, you might enjoy reading my post How Your Brain Is Holding You Back From Taking Opportunities.
And lastly, don’t forget to sign up to my FREE ON DEMAND TRAINING – From Dream To Reality – How to bring your biggest goals to life.
Here’s what you’ll learn:
- The simple and high-level 6-step process to go from hot mess to goal getter
- What it takes to be a goal getter
- How to go from procrastinating non-stop and not seeing any results to consistently taking action (hello goal, I’m coming for you!)
… and so much more!
