7 Reasons Why You Haven’t Reached Your Goals
You don’t know what success is
The problem with success is that most people don’t fully understand what it is. Success cannot be generalized because success is not the same thing for everyone. A successful life all depends on the individual’s goals for themselves and their ability to achieve those goals. Goals change throughout a person’s life so the idea of success will also change. If at the age of 5 a child wants to grow up to be a football player, then success is making it to the NFL. But by the age of 21 if he decides that investment banking is what he would like to do, then his definition of success has changed.
Wrong assessment of what you can do
I’ve never been a big American Idol fan. It is amazing the fanatics that this show has spawned through a series of singing competitions that are split into elimination rounds. When this show is in season, the talk of every radio and television station is who will win Idol. One of the biggest draws of the program is being able to witness those poor souls who truly believe they are destine to become famous despite their obvious lack of singing talent. Although millions of people sit back and watch as a person blindly attempts an impossible feat, many of those observers are doing the same thing in their own lives.
Many embark on the journey of success without truly knowing if they have the tools they need to claim victory.
Unreasonable goals
They are sometimes called unrealistic goals. Right along with an assessment of what you can do, you must also correctly assess what the goal is. In order to prevent yourself from setting unreasonable goals, accomplishments towards that goal should be measured by time. If your goal is to make a certain amount of money, then to make sure you are making progress you should set a time frame for that goal to be realized.
When you examine your situation and reevaluate your skill set, you will be better able to judge how realistic your goal is. I must advise you that this does not mean that you should short yourself and aim low. Les Brown said, “Shoot for the moon and if you miss you will still be among the stars”. But being realistic means that you are willing to equip yourself with the skills, education, discipline, hard work, and persistence that it will take to achieve your intention.
Your thinking is not aligned with your goals
Doubt and fear are two incredibly powerful inhibitors. Mixed with a lack of clarity and misguided vision, success is almost impossible. Aligning your thoughts with your goals is crucial to what you want to achieve. Changing your thoughts and managing your inhibitors may be a problematic task. Especially if your thinking has been misaligned for a long period of time.
Your thought process when dealing with your success should reinforce what you want to accomplish not undermine it. It’s like that old saying, ‘if you want to catch a thief, you must think like a thief’. If you want to be a successful person, you must think like a successful person. It is well known that most of the most influential people in the history of the world had different ways of thinking. Your way of thinking is the beginning of your success. William Arthur Ward said, “Nothing limits achievement like small thinking, nothing expands possibilities like unleashed thinking.”
Your Actions are not aligned with your goals
Although I enjoyed The Secret, I think that they failed to emphasis on the importance of action in a successful life. The movie did a good job of inspiring the viewer to change their thinking so that great things will happen but it glanced over the fact that action needs to take place in order to claim those great things. As I said before your thinking is the first step towards success, not the only step.
Think about this quote by John Locke “The actions of men are the best interpreters of their thoughts.” Those who have achieved great things not only thought great thoughts, but they also took great actions and took great risk. That is one reason that I enjoy biographies. When I read about someone who has accomplished much in their lives I try to take notice of those acts and risk that were taken in order to realize those accomplishments. The people, who are willing to take action towards their goals and seize opportunities, are the one who break that barrier of potential and achieve success.
Your environment is not aligned with your goals
If you’ve never heard of the story of the crab bucket here it is in a nutshell
A man was walking along the beach and saw another man fishing in the surf with a bait bucket beside him. As he drew closer, he saw that the bait bucket had no lid and had live crabs inside.
"Why don't you cover your bait bucket so the crabs won't escape?” he said.
"You don't understand.” the man replied, "If there is one crab in the bucket it would surely crawl out very quickly. However, when there are many crabs in the bucket, if one tries to crawl up the side, the others grab hold of it and pull it back down so that it will share the same fate as the rest of them."
We might look at that story with our big human brains and think that those poor unintelligent creatures doom themselves by their behaviors. Surely humans are much more logical and would never react that way. Truth is people act that way all the time.
You’ve given up too soon.
Thomas Edison said, “Many of life's failures are experienced by people who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up”. The importance of persistence is sometimes overlooked in society today. We require things to come fast and easy and if they don’t, then we move on. This idea doesn’t work when applied to the principals of success. When obstacles appear and the goal seems impossible is when most people bail. There was a recent survey of Pentamillionaires (people who have made 5 million dollars) who started their own business or worked for a small company that had an explosive growth. Most reported that their success came in a lump sum after years of effort. Years of effort!
You never know how close you are to succeeding. You only know what you’ve done so far to succeed. Your goals and dreams may be a day, two days, one hour away. But if you give in now you’ll never know.
Take a look at the list and then take a look at your life. Focus on the things that must be change in order to accomplish what you want, then take action to do them.

Ralph Jean-Paul is a motivational speaker and the founder of Potential2Success.com. He is a champion speaker who has mentored many to success. Please visit us at Potential2Success.com