The six reasons people avoid written goals.
The first question is "How much progress have you made on your business this year? Specifically, by what percentile are you growing (or missing the mark)?"
Not sure how to answer?
So, how are you measuring your goals? By a standard such as your own personal goals or by some other method?
If this is a sore subject because you don’t have specific goals, or you simply have trouble achieving them, then stick with me on this one.
I'm going to share with you some of the reasons that might be stopping you from achieving your goals.....
And until you understand what might be stopping you, you can't make the necessary changes in order to achieve your goals.
Why WRITTEN goals are essential
The first thing I want to say is that it’s important to have written goals.
In 1953, Yale’s class of 1933
was surveyed and interviewed after twenty years in their careers.
The results showed that 3% of the graduates were making more money than the other 97%, combined.
What made the difference?
The 3% had written goals.
And these were Yale graduates!
They were all intelligent, dedicated and hard-working, however the difference in their results was massive.
There was another study of Harvard Business School graduates of 1979.
This study showed that at graduation, 87% of the class had no goals at all.
We can presume that all of those intelligent, ambitious people had big plans for themselves, right?
But they hadn’t clearly articulated them, even to themselves.
That left 13% of the class with goals, and only 3% had clearly written goals and an action plan to achieve them.
Ten years later, in 1989, this class was surveyed again.
The results were as follows:
The 13% who had goals, on average, were making twice as much money as the 84% who did not.
What’s even more shocking is that the 3% who had written goals, on average, were making ten times as much money as the other 97% put together!
The point is that the mere act of setting a goal and writing it down hugely increases your odds of achievving them.
So here’s your first piece of advice:
If you have a goal and you want to achieve it, write it down!
The six reasons people avoid written goals
Let’s talk about the six reasons
why people don’t write down their goals, because I think it's really important.
We all know that you need to set goals and have a plan of action, but most people don’t bother.
They set their New Year’s resolutions and then lose sight of them and fall off the action plan (and the whole process of goal setting).
Why is that?
Well, it’s due to one (or more) of these six reasons:
1. Avoiding responsibility
The first reason why people don’t have written goals is to avoid responsibility.
You see, when you set a goal and write it down, you make a firm commitment.
It makes you responsible for your success or failure.
The reality is that most people just don’t want to take responsibility - whether they're willing to admit that or not.
It’s easy to claim responsibility for success once you achieve it.
But when you fail, very few people want to take responsibility for failing.
If you never write the goals down, you avoid that responsibility.
2. Fear of criticism
Another reason is fear of criticism.
We’re criticised by society and by other people.
As adults, we develop mental blocks about being criticised. This means we never set goals so we can't be criticised.
However, once you see what you sacrifice because of fear, it seems somewhere between silly and tragic to miss out on so much because of it.
3. Lack of knowledge
One of the biggest reasons why people don’t have written goals, and don’t set goals in general, is they don’t know how.
That may sound silly but they just don’t understand how to do it.
If you’re in that group, we’re going to talk about the steps to goal setting in the next blog.
Click here to be taken to the seven rules of effective goal setting.
4. Lack of faith
If you haven’t had any experience of goals setting, you probably don’t think the process works.
However, if you were lucky enough to grow up in a home, or work in am environment, where goal setting was talked about and encouraged, then you’re one of the lucky ones. You know and understand the importance of setting goals.
Most of us didn’t or don't, so we just understand this whole notion that you need to be setting and hitting goals on a regular basis.
5. The curse of early success
Another reason people don't set goals is the curse of early success.
If you experienced success with certain things early on in life, without much effort, you might think that you can carry on having that success without setting goals.
Unfortunately, if this is what you think then you’re setting yourself up to fail!
6. Fear of failure
The final reason people don't set goals is fear of failure.
Most people are really frightened of failing.
This is one of the two biggest fears that hold people back from going forward.
(The other is fear of rejection.)
Here’s how fear of failure works…
When you set a goal, and you don’t believe you’re going to hit it, you create a chance of failure.
In order to avoid risking that failure, it’s easier to not set the goal in the first place.
It sounds silly but it’s this thought process and self-sabotage that can actually prevent you from setting a goal.
You need to understand and realise that these are the things that might be holding you back.
They are what they are.
If you want to achieve something, if you want to go for it and achieve greatness, then you’ve got to get past those blocks, and not be afraid of rejection or failure…
And just start setting your goals! The blog 'The seven rules of effective goal setting' might be helpful to get you going.
If you'd like some help with setting your goals just drop me an email.