Are you tired of letting each day pass by without making meaningful gains towards achieving the goals that you set for yourself? You really want to achieve your goals, but you just can’t seem to make any real progress. Why does that happen?
Picture this: you’re driving to work in the morning thinking about how many things you want to get done at home after work. You’re all fired up because it is the beginning of the day and you’re full of energy.
You start working and you’re very productive. Lunch rolls around and you’re still full of energy.
After lunch, the problems start. Your eyes get heavy. Something happens that really annoys you. Maybe it’s a request from a co-worker that you have a problem with or a boss who is a little bit of a micromanager.
You try to give yourself some motivation by thinking about your goals. Your productivity levels start falling until you’re getting almost nothing done.
At the end of the day, when you are driving home, you decide that when you get there you’ll just watch one episode of that show that you like because you’re tired and “you deserve a break.” I mean, you did put up with a lot today, right?
Before you know it, you’re 5 episodes deep and ordering pizza because you didn’t even take the time to make dinner. Achieving your goals seems like such a daunting task at this point. You really don’t even want to try.
You feel crappy about yourself for not living up to the expectations that you set for yourself. But it happens again the next day. And again. And again.
Saturday rolls around and you have a whole week’s worth of chores to catch up on. You didn’t spend any time this entire week on the goals that you set for yourself. That book that you’ve been dying to read has just been sitting there all week collecting dust.
You get a little angry with yourself. “Why can’t I just achieve one of the goals that I set for myself?!”
The problem isn’t that you don’t have the drive or motivation to take care of business.
The problem is that you are allowing your emotions and a momentary lapse in strength overpower your aspirations to achieve your goals.
This ends up becoming an endless loop of doing the same thing every day. You have these big ideas about how you will spend your time to achieve all of the goals that you set for yourself.
Don’t feel like you’re being singled out on this. It happens to all of us.
How long does that emotion last? The annoyed feeling that you let your co-worker cause. The frustration with yourself because you’re not achieving your goals. The emotion that is making you lazy and ruining your dreams.
I’d be willing to bet it probably doesn’t last very long. Maybe a minute or two. Probably less. But you are letting that tiny fraction of your day determine how you are spending a major portion of it. Those couple of minutes are stopping you from becoming the person that you really want to be.
Stop letting your emotions control you.
Change your thoughts and you will change your emotions
You must be very careful about what you are thinking about because your thoughts literally run your entire life.
On your drive home, you are thinking about how you are missing out on that show that everyone in the office is binge watching. You’re thinking about how tired you are. You’re thinking about how comfy your couch is. Achieving your goals just doesn’t seem to matter to you right now.
Change your thinking and change your life.
Instead of thinking about those things, think about how great it would be to knock out 2 chapters of that book you’ve had for a month, how awesome you’d feel if you crushed a 30 minute workout, or how it’s finally time to start writing the book you keep putting off. You could even sit down and find your whys.
Action inspires action
The story from above is, unfortunately, the way that a lot of us live our lives on a daily basis. We put all of our energy into working for someone else, and when we get home we don’t do anything for ourselves. Our personal development is going nowhere.
Remember when you were a kid and you had sports practice, but you didn’t really want to go? Your parents made you anyway. They knew that it would help you achieve your goals.
If you’re a parent now, you go through the same things with your kids. They don’t want to do something, but you know it’s good for them so you make them.
It’s time to be a good parent to yourself.
Learn how to be disciplined and it won’t matter how you are feeling. Discipline starts with the little things. Instead of flipping your TV on, open a book. Instead of snoozing your alarm in the morning, get up when the first one goes off. Instead of scrolling your Instagram feed for an hour, go to the gym and start building yourself into the person that you want to be.
You will make better decisions along with each action that you take to make yourself a better person. Those positive actions will turn into other positive actions.
Emotions will only last for a short period of time, but those actions that you take will last forever.
It’s time for you to finally become the person that you want to be. No more excuses. You won’t let your emotions control you any longer. You won’t let anything stop you from achieving the goals you set for yourself. Your dreams are within reach if you just take action!
Wrapping it up
Don’t wait until tomorrow to start working to achieve your goals. Start today. Take action. Be disciplined. Don’t let your momentary emotions stop you from making the things happen that you know need to happen.
If you are looking for some more practical advice on how to set and achieve goals, then check out our goal setting guide.
Your goals are within reach. Your dreams can be a reality. Now you know why it’s been so hard for you to achieve the goals that you set for yourself. Next time your emotions try to stop you from doing what needs to be done, overcome them and do it anyway.
You’ll thank yourself for it.