3 Reasons You’re Not Achieving Your Goals

Hey love,
If you tried everything but are still not achieving your goals, keep reading because the underlying reason has to do with your mindset. If you have certain beliefs that are not in alignment with what you’re trying to achieve, you’re making your life ten times harder. I personally struggled with these things and instead of looking at my thoughts, beliefs and mindset, I always focused on changing my actions.

Spoiler alert: It doesn’t work that way – it works the other way round

Your beliefs become your thoughts,
Your thoughts become your words,
Your words become your actions,
your actions become your habits,
your habits become your values,
your values become your destiny.
(Ghandi)

Your Thoughts Determine ALL Your Results

By just changing the actions in your life, you will get ahead to a certain degree but you will still end up neglecting your thoughts and feelings. When your actions are not in alignment with your thoughts/beliefs, you will eventually start fighting with yourself and holding yourself back from achieving your goals. This is what makes change so hard and frustrating for most people when they’re only going after the action. It all starts with our thoughts and that’s why developing a positive and empowering mindset is so important.

So here are three reasons you’re not achieving your goals. We are often so focused on changing our actions that we completely neglect our mindset. I hope this inspires you to have a closer look at your thoughts and the way you might be holding yourself back without even realizing it.

Identifying the root of why you are holding yourself back, is one of the most important steps in personal development because only if you are conscious of what’s not working for you right now, you can transform and make changes in your life.

3 Reasons You’re Not Achieving Your Goals

1. Lack of Belief in Yourself

If you think that you’re not the kind of person who can achieve the goal you have in mind, it will make things ten times harder for you because you’re fighting against yourself. It’s very likely that you will end up sabotaging yourself and holding you back from reaching your goals.

Here are some examples:

• You want to wake up early but at the same time you believe that you’re not a morning person and have to set multiple alarms in order to wake up.

• You want to start your own business but at the same time you don’t believe that you’re an entrepreneur.
  
• You want to have a fit and toned body but at the same time you believe that you’re someone who struggles with losing weight and doesn’t have the motivation to work out regularly.
  
• You want to be confident and stand up for yourself but at the same time you believe that you’re a shy and insecure person who lets people walk all over you.

As you see, all of these are conflicting thoughts that are holding you back from achieving your goals. Personally, realizing this simple fact helped me so much get to the root of why things weren’t working for me.

I used to dream of having my own blog and helping people all over the world with my content but at the same time I believed that I wasn’t the kind of person who can pull that off and I was scared to show myself to the world in such an open and vulnerable way.

Of course I still find myself not having enough belief in myself from time to time, but whenever you find yourself having these conflicting thoughts, you at least know what is holding you back at the moment and where to make a change.


You might also like: How To Finally Stop Thinking You’re Not Good Enough

2. You Are Not Standing By Your Goals

Another reason why you might not be achieving your goals, could be that you are not standing behind what you’re doing. Let’s say you are working towards your goal but instead of being proud of yourself for putting in all the work and effort, you’re downplaying your goal in front of other people. This might be partly because you don’t want to offend them and partly because you are scared what they will say. I often found myself doing this and for me, one of the main reason was that I didn’t want to make people feel bad.

So instead of admitting that my morning routine was really important to me, that I work out regularly and that I love personal growth, I would downplay everything. Looking back, I have to say that all my fears were irrational. We often create these worst-case scenarios in our minds that never come true.

This is what happens when you’re not standing by your goals

By not standing by your goals and dreams, you’re basically telling the universe that your goals are not as important to you, that you actually don’t really want them or that you’re even ashamed of them. 

Instead, you want to communicate to the universe that you have a very strong desire to achieve your goals and that they are attached to positive emotions like happiness, gratitude and joy instead of feeling doubt and fear when talking about your dream.

I know that it’s not always easy to talk openly and positively about your goals because you might be scared of other people’s judgement (I’ve been there too) but I believe in you and here are some tips that helped me and will hopefully help you as well:

Tips for standing by your goals

Next time when you feel thoughts of doubt and fear creep up, come back to these steps and take 5 minutes to self-reflect:

1. Think about your WHY. Why do you want to achieve your goal? Why is it so important to you? What kind of positive impact will it have on the world?
   
2. Then, in a second step, think about the worst case scenario (let’s say you’re scared of other people’s judgement). Think about what the worst-case scenario would be like. 
   
3. Lastly, in a third step, ask yourself: “Is this really important enough to stop me from achieving my dreams?”
   
   

Spoiler alert: The answer is very likely always: NO!

We only live once and often, when we end up doing what we really love, other people + the universe will see that and will support you. Try to take on a bird’s eye view on your life.
Thinking about the bigger picture always helps.

3. You’re Self-sabotaging Your Success When You Get Close To Your Goals

Do you sometimes find yourself working diligently towards a goal but as soon as you start feeling the momentum and get close to achieving your goal, you suddenly stop. It definitely happened to me before. One of the underlying reasons why you’re doing this is that you have this belief that you don’t deserve to be successful/happy/fit or whatever it is that you wish for. 

It’s often rooted in a combination of lack of self-worth and fear of success (Yes, it may sound crazy but many people are not only scared of failure but also scared of success. Having amazing success would also mean massive change in your life and often lies outside of our comfort zones).

In many cases we are also not even aware of the fact that we are sabotaging our own happiness and success.

This is why it’s so important to catch yourself when you are showing self-sabotaging thoughts/behavior.

Becoming conscious of the fact that you’re sabotaging your success is the first step into the right direction. These questions can help you identify if you are standing in your own way (in basically any area of your life)

Check in with yourself regularly and ask yourself the following questions:

• Am I downplaying my abilities?
• Am I prioritizing instant gratification?
• Am I avoiding what needs to be done?
• Am I not prioritizing self-care?
• Am I often procrastinating?
• Am I allowing self-defeating thoughts to take over?

There will be another, in-depth post about how to stop self-sabotaging but here are some tips to stop sabotaging your success:

• Journaling about all your positive personality traits and skills. Think about how much you have to offer to the world and how important it is that you are diligently working towards making it come to fruition.
• Meditation and practicing positive self-talk. 
• Developing a growth mindset
• Taking full responsibility for your life. Remember that you are the creator of your own reality. Find joy in consciously creating your life and achieving the best possible outcomes.
• Celebrate your success and be proud of how far you have come.
  

Talk to yourself like you would to someone you love. (Brené Brown)

Final Note

I hope you identified some of the ways you are holding yourself back. Becoming conscious of what is not working for you is always the first step to personal growth. It’s not always comfortable but so necessary that we are honest with ourselves.

I personally find that the most important factor to achieving your goals is definitely having confidence and unwavering belief in yourself. It’s not other people who have to believe in your dreams but YOU.

I believe in you and I’m sending so much love to you. Finally, I want to share one of my favorite quotes with you :

The future belongs to those who believe in the beauty of their dreams. ( Eleanor Roosevelt)

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