Why Does Success Elude us?

"The road to success and the road to failure are almost exactly the same."

So what road did you decided to take?

It’s coming to that time of year again, when we start to reflect on how the last 12 months have played out, how we, our business or our careers have performed or where they have taken us?

And if you are like 93% of society you will be wondering what went wrong, where did we lose our focus, how can I ensure next year does not follow the same path

If you want to succeed, you need to set goals.

Without goals you will lack focus and direction. Goal setting not only allows you to take control of the direction you're heading in; it also provides you a benchmark for determining whether you are actually succeeding or not.

All success & failure starts with the mindset, without goals to help guide and direct your mind to what you want from life, you are just leaving your success to chance.

To accomplish your goals, however, you need to know how to set them. You can't simply say, "I want this" and expect it to happen.

Goal setting is a process that starts with careful consideration of what you want to achieve, and ends with a lot of hard work and focus to actually achieving it.

In between, there are some very well-defined steps (detailed & defined plans or smaller goals) that transcend that specific goal. Knowing these steps will allow you to formulate goals that you can accomplish in small incremental steps, thus allowing you the feeling of achievement as you go along.

It’s hard to achieve our goals. More often than not, we fail to follow through. Either we lose focus, change our minds, or simply give up. For one reason or another, things get in the way, and our mentality shifts, life happens and we just stop trying.

You know the feeling, don’t you? We’ve all failed to achieve one goal or another at some point in our lives. I know I’ve been there more times than I’d like to admit. But the thing that interests me most isn’t whether or not we’ve failed, it’s why we’ve failed.

Why did we throw in that proverbial towel? What caused us reach our breaking point? Did we clearly look at our tipping points and put a plan in place to counteract something we knew would be a challenge?

Clearly, achieving any major goal is difficult. For the most part, it takes all of our mental, emotional, and physical energy. It involves countless decisions that we conduct on a daily basis. Every thought, resultant emotion, and behaviour plays some role in that failure.

Often, we start out with focus and determination towards our goals. In the beginning, we’re excited about the change and doing something new, potentially making revolutionary advancements in our lives. But over time, that focus & determination wanes when we realise the hard work, guts, determination and life changing difficulties that lie ahead in the wake of our biggest dreams.

“It’s in the want to we find the how to”

Over time, we give up. We cave and call it quits. We fail to achieve our goals, not for lack of wanting or trying, but lack of not wanting or trying hard enough. Whenever we want to achieve a goal as badly as we want to breathe the air in order to stay alive, that’s when we see things through.

"Opportunities don't happen. You create them."

When you focus on the goal, the plan and take action you help redirect your subconscious mind on what you want and thus create your own opportunities.

 Any goal that’s monumental enough to want to achieve, is going to be difficult.

Since so much of our behaviour on a daily basis is habit-driven, this makes sense. It’s also easy to understand why we revert back to our old ways. For example, if we try to lose weight, we might give it all we think we’ve got for a number of weeks. But, then we hit that brick wall. We get frustrated and disappointed when things don’t happen right away.

We lose sight of what we want and why we wanted it, the need gets lost in the day to day grind of life. So How do we push through the pain to reach our goals when they seem so far away?

• Keep the Focus

One of the reasons why we fail to achieve our goals is due to an overall loss of focus. It’s hard to stay laser-focused for a prolonged period of time. Even for people that are highly driven to succeed, losing focus is common. There are all sorts of interruptions in life that can aid in a loss of focus. Clearly, problems can and do arise often. BUT, there are a few ways we can direct our focus to ensuring we stay on course.

• Having a defined plan of action

Every goal you set should have a detailed action plan, by Year, month, week and by day (High Payoff Activities). You should have a list of actions you must take every day to ensure you stay on plan to achieve your goals.

• Ensure you have a strong enough reason for your goal.

Most people fail because they do it all wrong, or for all the wrong reasons and set themselves up for failure before they even start.

How did your goals, plans, and resolutions pan out so far this year?

When you set goals the wrong way, in that you don't have strong enough reasons for wanting to achieve them or don't know how to correctly set them, it's a lot easier to lose sight of your goals, so your hopes and dreams go crashing out within weeks of setting them?

You can’t just say you want to succeed because you want more money or a better car or a bigger house. Those are superficial reasons. You need a reason that goes deeper than that. Whenever you have a reason that’s as important as the air that you breathe, you’ll do what it takes to achieve your goals.

• What is it you want, why do you want it, then ask yourself “The five why’s”

Why do I want this, and keep asking yourself why for another 5 times and that will get to the real reason you want this particular goal and strengthen the opportunity that you take the appropriate action to achieve it?

• Create new Habits

Creating a new set of habits takes time, you can create a new habit by doing something over and over again consecutively for a period of 21 to 29 days, and then correctly setting yourself up for success becomes the norm

It doesn’t happen overnight. If you keep pushing, keep focus and learn to write and define your goals correctly you can and will see very quick results.

I know how difficult setting goals can be, I have been setting goals for other people, originations and businesses for years, the magic is to understand where you are starting from and what matters most to you.

Understand this: People don’t care about your goals, they only care about their own, so if you are waiting for something to change you must be the one leading that change or nothing will change

If you or your business are ready to get your life, career or business back on track get yourself signed up for my:

"Accelerate: 7 Steps To Success"

Step 1: Unleash your Potential, Step 2: Success Formula, Step 3: Peak Performance/Master Your Time, Step 4: Mindset Performance, Step 5: The Power of Feedback, Step 6: Taking Back Control, Step 7: Goals Setting & Defining

Nothing will change unless you change, Nothing will get better unless you get better!

The Power Within Training & Development

James Fleming