Why It's So Hard To Finish What You Start ... And What To Do About It

The most successful people you know, including the people you don't know in real life like CEO's of big companies, international speakers and New York Times Best Selling Authors have a common trait:

They finish strong.

Finishing strong is what will take you from the top 5% of your field to the top 1% of your field. It's also what will take you from being in the top 1% of your field to the top .01% of your field.

To put that in perspective, to be in the top 5% of wage earners in the United States, you need to make $342,987 per year. If you want to be in the top 1%, you'd need to more than double that and make $823,763. To be in the .01%, it's $3,212,486.

See how vast that seemingly insignificant percentage gap is in reality?

Finishing strong is rarified air. It's 1% and .01% shit.

Everyone is a great starter. People all over the place set out with ideas, goals and dreams, but very few of them finish what they started.

It doesn't matter where those people stop either. They could give up a few weeks after they start or they could call it a game when they are two yards from the goal line. Where they stop is irrelevant to what I am writing about today.

I want to address the fundamental question: Why is it so hard for humans to finish?

You'd think knowing that finishing strong is what takes you from the top 5% to the top 1% would be enough to finish, but it's not. By the way, finishing strong is also what will take you from being in the top 50% to the top 5% overnight.

Even if finishing strong means millions of dollars per year or if it means saving a marriage that's on life support, most people will struggle to do it. Even if finishing strong means prolonging life itself, people still struggle.

Dangle any carrot out there you want and finishing is still the most difficult thing to do.

For the past 8 years, I have helped people finish strong as a career. I've worked directly with hundreds and spent countless hours researching the topic.

All of that has led me to three primary reasons why it's so hard to finish and what exactly must be done to overcome them.

#1: People aren't emotionally prepared to finish.

The achievement of goals is a science executed by human artists. People tend to think tactically about how they will achieve their goals, but spend little, if any time mentally and emotionally preparing to achieve them.

This fits well with what psychologists call "the emotional cycle of change." It's got four distinct phases that will take you on an emotional roller coaster. I'll do my best to briefly explain each phase.

(Note that I changed the names of the phases because the one's the psychologists came up with were not fun)

Phase 1 is called "Fired Up!" This is the stage where you are most excited about what you want to accomplish and have the highest level of energy in your activities toward accomplishing your goals.

Phase 2 is called "Fucked Up." This is where the temporary high you had in "Fired Up" gives way to a better understanding of the enormity and difficulty of the task in front of you. In this phase, you start to question if you've got what it takes to follow through and if your plan will even work.

Phase 3 is called "The Trough Of Despair." This is where progress has seemingly stalled and whatever you do to break out, it feels like nothing works. You go through periods of hopelessness and even worse, start to think it wasn't so bad back before you started on the journey to accomplish something better for yourself.

Phase 4 is called "The Lift." In this stage, the vast majority of obstacles are behind you and you are virtually assured of achieving your goal. It feels good to be in "The Lift."

Of course, you have to make it to "The Lift" and that only comes when you are emotionally prepared to be a finisher. Here's how to pull that off:

First, accept that it's going to be hard to get what you want. If being fit, rich and in great relationships was easy, everyone would be fit, rich and in great relationships. Most people are not, which proves it's not easy.

Second, you have to truly understand why it matters you get what you want. This can be accomplished by asking yourself the simple question of why you want what you want. That will most likely give you a surface level answer along the lines of "I want to lose 20 pounds so I feel better about myself!" The next step is to take your first answer and ask, "Why do I want that?" In this case, you may want to feel better about yourself so you can be more forward in your relationships. Repeating this cycle of asking yourself 'why?' four to five times is usually enough to get you to your true motivation.

#2: People allow themselves to get distracted

Look at the way we live today and compare that to how we lived 20 years ago or 40 years ago. There are so many things competing for our attention that we didn't have to deal with before.

Your phone lights up with an endless stream of text messages, email notifications, phone calls, social media prompts and new videos. You are even getting distracted right now reading a blog post.

When you look at the commonality of all the things I just listed that compete for your attention, you'll notice that all of it is perceived as new information. Our brains are biologically wired to pay attention to novelty.

The best example I can offer here is hanging a new painting in your house. At first, you notice it all the time. Then a few weeks go by and you don't even remember it's there. The novelty wore off and so did your attention span.

As humans, we naturally want to do what interests us now, so we tend to pay attention to things and do things that are novel.

The most effective way I've found to overcome this problem is to use what I call an "Environmental Assist." Here's what to do:

Take all of the things that distract you out of play. If you're at work and your phone is a distraction, put it in a vacant office or unused desk during times when you absolute have to focus. Turn your email off, your desk phone on silent and your door shut during these times.

All of that is creating a sterile environment where you have almost no choice but to focus on the task at hand.

#3: People aren't clear about what finishing means

If you ask someone about what they want to accomplish, you will most often hear them say they want to lose weight or make money, but neither of those are clear.

It's easy to get off track and give up when there is not clarity of what you are trying to achieve.

Answer this seemingly easy question: What do you want?

I've asked that question directly to hundreds of people and most of the time they spit back a list of everything they don't want. They don't want to live in the same house or drive the same car. In some cases, they don't want to be married to the same person.

Once we work past all of the 'don't wants' someone may tell me they want $10,000,000. When I ask a few more questions, my experience is that it's hard for them to come up with what they would do with $10,000,000. The interest alone is almost enough to get you into the top 1% of wage earners without ever touching the principal.

The best way I've found to overcome this problem is to spend time figuring out what you really want. By the way, I'll have you consider what you really want is NOT a specific amount of money or a specific number on the scale.

Those are things that may happen to you on the way to getting what you want, but what you really want is one or two steps beyond that.

For example, if you want money, what does that buy you? Your first answer may be a house or a car, but that's not the real answer. For most people, money is a tool to remove fear and anxiety. If they have enough of it, they won't have to worry so much.

Another example, if you want to look more physically fit, your first answer may be a specific weight and specific percentage of body fat. Those are both great things, but I'll have you consider what you're really after in goal with your body is self confidence. ?

Now that you know the three primary reasons people don't finish what they started and how to overcome them, you'll get better and finishing almost immediately ... if you execute.

Of course, even doing these things is hard and there is a framework for getting them done.

It is way too much information to read in a single blog post, but I am going to be walking people through this framework at a virtual live event in late March.

I haven't decided yet, but it's going to be low cost or no cost to attend because I see too many people who have the outward appearance of success but don't feel truly successful because they know they can go to an even higher level if they just learn how to finish.

If that sounds like you, send me a direct message and I'll make sure you know all the details about the virtual live event as they become available.