Why MOST Goals Fail

Leadership Excellence Ltd. https://leadershipexcellencenow.com

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This is Greg Thomas from Leadership Excellence, Ltd. Welcome to our channel. Over the decades I have helped thousands of individuals learn how to establish goals for their personal life and business. But do you know why MOST goals utterly fail? There are many reasons… including lack of planning, setting a goal only as an emotional response, procrastination, or a lack of personal motivation. We will talk about these in an upcoming video. But I don’t believe any of those are the biggest reason. When I am working with a client I tell them there is something they need to absolutely do before they start writing down their goals. If you don’t do this then you have placed the cart before the horse. Here it is…

From my experience working “one-on-one” with people, I believe the biggest reason that most goals fail is because FIRST… a person has not established a Personal Mission Statement. Allow me to tell you what happened to me when I went into a bank about 13 years ago to establish my 2nd business… Leadership Excellence Ltd. The banker said to me… “so what’s your business mission statement? What’s the purpose of your business? By what values will you operate your business? Why should anyone buy from you compared to your competition?

What unique “niche” does your business have that will set you apart to be distinctive? Where do you desire your business to be 5-years from now… how about 20-years from now?

These were all excellent questions and the same principles hold true in our personal lives. So, before we start establishing goals… doesn’t it make sense that we have personally acknowledged our life mission, our purpose, our values, our talents, our desired future? Again, this is why I encourage all of my clients to first… create your own Personal Mission Statement and then… create written goals that complement your Mission. This is the first step in what we call your Personal Leadership. This is when you choose to seize control of your own life and path knowing that a default “mission statement” will take over if you do nothing. We talked about this in an earlier video on this channel entitled, “The Power of Making Your Own Decisions.”

Here is the most important thing I will tell you on this video today… Creating goals without first taking the time to create your own Personal Mission Statement is like building a house without any blueprints!
By building a life mission statement you create a “game plan” for life, and then establish active goals to achieve it. In the process, your moral and ethical values become your compass in life. A personal mission statement helps you to answer an important individual question that only you can answer…
Am I truly living or am I “being lived”?
What are the advantages of doing this first?

It becomes your own personal “constitution” and your “True North.” By this, I mean that it…
1. Focuses your energies & resources…
2. Provides a sense of orientation… and
3. Unifies the fragments of your life…

During the creation process, it makes you think of your life in ways you probably never have before. It “teases out” some vague ideas you have about your purpose, and by following through the process makes them more concrete… from mere generalities to a declared belief.

When you are done… you have created a document that reflects your mission, purpose, belief system, values, and the vision you have for your life… in your own words. It will also remind you of your “personal responsibilities” as you live each day.

I always encourage my clients to hang it on a wall so that they and others can see and be reminded of who and what you are as stated in your very own words.

When you create business or personal goals afterward, they are in concert and in alignment with your stated mission.

I have seen numerous times where an individual previously created a goal that turned out to be in conflict with their value system or contradicted their mission. What good are goals when this happens? Frankly, this is why so many individuals start goals and never finish them. It is why they lose interest. Unconscientiously… they know there is a conflict with what they believe to be true, and what they claim they want to achieve in a goal.

And it doesn’t stop there! In the future, it helps you to remain grounded when you face the difficulties of life. In an earlier video, I mentioned how I was diagnosed with a life-threatening illness while in my late 40’s. By then, I had been already been using a mission statement since my 20’s. Whenever I have faced a difficult test in life… and have stopped to re-read my own Personal Mission Statement I have known exactly how to react, what approach to take, and what my next step should be, because my missions’ values keep me centered in life and grounded. The same can be true for you.