Why You Aren't Achieving Your Biggest Goals

You might think it's presumptuous of me to proclaim that you aren't achieving your biggest goals, but if you're reading this, it means the headline hooked you ... which means you're struggling to achieve those big goals you have.

It's not like you're alone. The vast majority of big goals people set for themselves will remain goals rather than achievements.

A big part of that is because those goals are ... BIG.

Someone who currently makes $80,000 a year will set a goal to make $1,000,000 a year.

Or someone who weighs 320 pounds will set a goal to get to 150.

It's easy to dream big and then get overwhelmed by the distance between your current state and where you want to go. It's what stops most people from taking action in the first place.

I'll get to the part about how to overcome this problem in a moment, but first I want to be clear that I'm not making the case against having big goals. You should set big goals for yourself that challenge you to become someone different.

One of my current goals is to own a Piaggio Avente ... the fastest and sexiest twin turbo prop out there. (that's a plane for those of you who just got lost)

No doubt, I will have to become a different person to ditch the Southwest A-List for private flights all over the country.

But I know that's not going to happen tomorrow, which brings me to the part about actually achieving big goals.

The way to achieve big goals is actually to stop setting them.

That doesn't mean you'll simply float along with no purpose or direction, hoping good things happen in your life.

And it doesn't mean that all you have to do is throw a few positive affirmations out into the Universe.

It means you shift your thinking away from the result and more toward the action.

To put it another way, you have to separate your intentions from your commitments.

You might have felt committed to a goal before. Maybe you were all in on losing 20 pounds or making $100,000 in a year, but how could you possibly commit to such a thing?

Commitments are hard and fast. A downhill skier is fully committed to the double black diamond as soon as he passes his bindings and gravity is pulling him down the hill. There is no stopping.

You can say you're committed to losing 20 pounds, but there are factors outside of your control like illness or a tyrannical government could shut down your gym for 'your own good.' (hypothetically, of course)

See, in the context of being committed means achievement come hell or high water, you can't really be committed to losing 20 pounds ... but you can have that be your intention.

Intentions are what you hope to have happen as a result of the actions you take.

Right now, my intention is to buy that Piaggio Avente, but I'm not committed to it.

What I am committed to is the actions I know are 100% in my control that I hope will make me enough money to fly private for the rest of my life.

I'm committed to making offers.

I'm committed to daily work on my sales skills.

I'm committed to connecting with people (more in the real world than online).

I'm committed to putting my phone in another office so I'm not pulled by distraction.

Are you seeing it yet?

If not, here it is on a bumper sticker:

You can't control the outcome. You can only control your output.

In other words, release your expectation of the results you feel like you should get because that mindset has a nasty habit of making us feel bad when things don't go our way.

On the other hand, you tend to feel pretty good when you follow through on something you said you would do.

Do enough of the things you said you would do and you'll achieve your most massive goals before you know it.