Why Most Goals Don’t Work

It may seem like a complete contradiction saying that setting goals does not work because it gives you too much pressure to accomplish, but this is the truth. There are a few reasons why goals fail. A large part of why goal setting doesn’t work for most people is because they make unrealistic goals based on circumstances and not on desires. When a person sets a goal for themselves it is often for reasons such as a financial need to accomplish the goal or pressure from family and friends to reach a professional goal. These goals only act as a way to block a person in and force pressure upon them to succeed.

Setting goals that are based on circumstances or others around you is one of the reasons why goals fail and why individuals set themselves up for failure. This isn’t to say that people shouldn’t want to achieve things in their lives. Setting goals should be done in a manner that puts responsible thought into the goals and how to truly achieve them realistically. People should not expect to just throw a goal out there and have it accomplished.

Another reason why goals fail is that people often set them when they are in a situation that they want to get out of and in the heat of the moment. Making a New Year’s resolution is typically asking to fail as it is something everyone does because they are supposed to and something done not out of true overwhelming desire to accomplish the goal but out of a moment of impulse with no realistic plan to achieve the goal.

The reasons why goals fail are that we set goals that are expected of us not that we have great passion for. The goal becomes work when the desired end result is not something we have an overwhelming desire to accomplish. Setting a goal relating to getting into a particular University because our family has always attended it is something that is an expected goal. Getting that promotion at work because you are next in line is another such goal. These only add pressure to life and are not something that you enjoy striving toward.