3 Mistakes You Make When Goal Setting
By: Kate Branna
Tags: Habit Building, Goal Setting, Self Improvement, New Years Resolutions, Self Development

3 Mistakes You Make When Goal Setting

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Picture this:

It’s January 1st, 2021.

You wake up early, bright eyed and excited for a new year, ready to change your life. You tell yourself “this time, I mean it” as you put your running shoes on and get ready for that morning workout.

In the first week of January, you are consistent and committed. You do your workouts, you track your water intake, and choose the salad for lunch everyday. You feel great and start to wonder why you didn’t start doing this sooner!

As January drags on, you find yourself hitting the snooze button. “What’s 5 more minutes?” It’s cold out, so you start to skip the morning workout but promise you will make up for it later. As the days go by, that salad for lunch no longer sounds appealing.

Eventually, your life starts to look a lot like it did on December 31st, 2020 and that first week of intense motivation and commitment starts to feel like a distant fever dream.

So… what happened?

If this story sounds all too familiar, you are in the right place. And you are not alone.

Self development gurus, coaches and personal trainers probably wouldn’t be as popular and necessary as they are today if everyone was able to set goals and reach them the first time around.

It’s no surprise that January has the highest percentage of gym membership signups compared to any other month. The start of the new year is when you see social media posts from people announcing they are going vegan, trying Whole30 or giving up drinking for a month. It is always a time of new beginnings and goal setting! This year, I want to make sure you commit to those goals.

Whether you are trying to eat healthier, commit to a workout routine or want to start a meditation practice, there are a lot of ways you might be feeling stuck, overwhelmed or discouraged. Reflect on your own life as you read through these mistakes and see if you are guilty of any of them.

Mistake #1: Not having clear intentions

Are you setting these goals for the right reasons? Is this something you actually want or something you think you are supposed to want? Jumping on trendy bandwagons every other week is a quick way to lose yourself and deplete your energy trying to find what works for you.

All change starts with honesty. Any goal you set needs to have honest, clear, intentions behind it. Because when things inevitably get hard and motivation starts to dwindle come February 1st, a clear intention will push you to keep moving forward.

In Industrial Engineering we use a technique called root cause analysis to get deep into the root of an issue so we know we are solving the problem at it’s core. One of the techniques we use to get to the root cause is the “5 Why Analysis.”

To apply this to your own life, write down the goal you have set. Then ask yourself: “Why do I want to achieve this goal?” With that answer, ask yourself “why” again. Continue asking “why” you wanted your previous answer and why it is important to you. The idea is that as you go through it, you get out of your head and into your heart.

The mindset shift typically happens at the 3rd why, where it gets harder to answer. Go through this process as many times as needed (usually 4–7) to get clarity on the true intention behind the goal you are setting.

This clarity can be the difference between thinking you want to lose 5 pounds to fit into your jeans again and wanting to lose weight so you live a healthy life long enough to meet your grandkids. Which one of those intentions do you think will get you out of bed in the morning?

Mistake #2: Focusing too much on the goal and not enough on the process to get there

Alright, so now you have the intention behind your goal. Now what?

As important as your goal is, the process you create to get there is more important, because a goal without a plan of action is just an idea.

Focusing on reaching a goal in the fastest way possible is guaranteed to make you miserable, discouraged, and more likely to give up. The process is not just a means to an end, treat the process as an end in itself!

Our brains are incredibly efficient — most of what we do each day is a learned, habitual, autopilot behavior. It takes some effort and planning in order to disrupt those habitual patterns to make a change.

People who run marathons are successful not because they set a goal to run a marathon next month. They are successful because they built a foundational routine that they commit to each day to live life as a runner.

Before you get started, define your metrics of success and determine how you can measure those metrics. Does success look like 4 workouts per week, each at least 30 minutes long? How are you going to track that? What time of day can you commit to taking action?

Achieving a goal is a momentary accomplishment, the feeling won’t last. You have to build routines and processes that you can sustain long after that goal is achieved. The real change happens in the daily routine, the small moments and the mindset shifts.

Mistake #3: Not revisiting goals on a consistent basis

A clear intention, a solid routine, metrics for success and ways to measure those metrics won’t do you any good if you don’t take time to reflect.

If you are struggling to stay committed to your goals, revisiting them on a weekly or monthly basis brings awareness to your current situation to identify where things aren’t working. Have unexpected roadblocks or changes come up in your life that prevent you from committing to the routine you built? How can you address those roadblocks and keep moving forward?

Reflection is also the only way to validate that the action you are taking is truly giving you more of what you want. Sometimes goals evolve over time as you experience new things and learn more about yourself, and that’s okay! Reflection is a simple way to identify the changes that need to be made and pivot.

Final Thoughts

The concept of goal setting should not be taken lightly — it requires you to identify where you are at, define where you want to be and how you want to show up for yourself everyday. It is foundational to building your compelling future. Take time to get clarity around what you want, why you want it and how you are going to get there. It matters!