A simple guide on how to back on track if you lose interest in your own goals.

Ever set a goal and after sometime lost interest in the Goal? Then this post is for you.

People set their own goal, then why do they lose interest in their own goal? 

There are multiple reasons why people lose interest in their own goal. Some of the major reasons are,

  • Impractical Goal Setting
  • Too Many distractions
  • Having multiple goals at a time

Lets see them one by one,

1. Impractical Goal Setting:

The Goals set when our hopes are too high, are mostly impractical to achieve. After listening to a motivational speech or reading a motivational blog/book, your hope level will be high. The goals set at that time, will be high and you will try to push yourself at your best, by not taking the limitations. You will have a self thought that "I can do anything". 

That is probably true and you will have unmatched energy at that time. But after some days, if you cannot keep up your energy, you will feel the limitations draining your energy, you will start to think about the goal as not practical one. Once you convinced your subconscious mind that it's too impractical to achieve, you tend to lose your interest in that goal and move to something else. 

Let's take an example, One day Mr. X had a nice chat with one of his friends and was in a  good mood. He also watched a motivational video. He decided to set the course of his life upwards and become a millionaire. He sat down and created a Goal for that like "I will become a Millionaire in a Year". Then he started preparing monthly, weekly and daily targets for the goal (Goal Setting). He started to follow the targets religiously for a few days or even a few weeks.

After some time, he analyzed and found that the plan he created is not suitable for his current routine and he is unable to cope-up. Sometimes he is unable to do his daily targets which results in him announcing his day as failure to achieve his grand target. These circumstances may feed his subconscious mind, that he cannot achieve his targets and eventually it leads to him to lose interest in his goal.

One thing he missed is, the truth, that achieving a big goal is not gonna be a cake walk and there should be some sacrifices. Most of the time, the initial plan backfires and one should always alter the plans on the go (Improvisation).

There are two approaches to fix it.

1. One can re-analyse, when not in high hopes and remodel the Goal to fit to our current situation.

In Mr. X's case, he can analyze again and check why he is not able to complete the daily targets. Are they too impossible to do? If so, then he needs to set more practical tasks/targets to achieve. 

if something is not working out, change the plan to different action items to achieve the Goal.

2. One can re-analyse but stick with the impractical route

Sounds funny? But it will also work, if you train your mind to see the results. The best example is Elon Musk.

"If you give yourself 30 days to clean your home, it will take you 30 days.

But if you give yourself 3 hours, it will take 3 hours.

The same applies to your goals, ambitions, and potential." - Elon Musk

As said by Elon Musk, if you give enough of yourself to your goal, you can accomplish it in less time, or even if you may not achieve it you would have achieved what others can't even think of. For this second option, you have to train your mind, not to be distracted or discouraged with the obstacles and the fear of failure. 

2. Too Many distractions

One of the reasons we fail to achieve our goal is distractions. People are good at planning, they plan, organise and set targets. But when it comes to completing the targets, most of them failed. Why?

The major reason is “too many distractions”. There is a constant race between Instant Gratification and Delayed Gratification. 

Instant Gratification 

A short happiness of fulfilling an immediate desire, like watching a movie, spending money on the things which makes us happy for a short time.

Delayed Gratification 

A long-term Satisfaction we get after achieving something, like investing money for the future, learning new skills or completing a goal successfully as per the defined target. 

Instant Gratification is powerful and so people who couldn’t resist it, are often distracted by other pleasure activities and lose their time and energy. The desire to induce the Instant Gratification activities usually keep on growing and one wont get the feeling of satisfaction. It's kind of feeding the fire. It will always ask for more. The more you give, the bigger the fire becomes. 

On the other hand, the activities which lead us to delayed gratification, may not give instant pleasure and sometimes may be boring, but in long run, it will give better results. People who can’t control their urge to mediate pleasure, fail to see the results and lose their interest in their daily targets. 

Some of the activities that can cause Instant Gratification - Checking Mails, Spending more time in watching entertainment videos and Social Media, Binge watching Movies/Series.

How to fix it?

First, we have to understand that the pleasure we get in instant gratification won't last longer and the urge will continue forever. The Second step is trying to stick with the schedule. Checking Mails and Leisure time is needed, but give them a smaller window. Give them the last place in the schedule. Give first priority to the tasks in hand and make those leisure activities as a reward for your work. No work means No reward - Make it as a rule and follow it strictly. Self Discipline plays a major role in achieving it.

Read Brian Tracy’s Eat The Frog and James Clear’s Atomic Habits. These are some of the best time investments you can make if you want to overcome bad habits and be productive with your time.

3. Having multiple goals at a time:

Another Major problem for losing interest in your goal is, having multiple goals at the same time. Some people set multiple Goals and are unable to pursue any of them. We may think that achieving multiple goals is possible. But in reality, you won't achieve any of them. In other words, if you focus on only one thing at a time, you will give your 100% at that work and your success rate will be high.

As long as you can have the bandwidth to complete all your defined targets for all your goals, you can have multiple goals. But you also have to take into consideration other factors, like personal life, work-life balance and your social life. You shouldn’t over-burn yourself. 

One may think “Why shouldn’t I?, As long as I am comfortable with it”. Over-burying yourself in a long run, may cause depression and other personal problems, which may affect your mental health as well as your primary focus on Goals. So, in the end, you may not be able to achieve any of your goals. So it is better to have one goal at a time and pursue it.

Apart from these, there may be other reasons for losing your interest in your goals. The goal may not align to your interest and may not suitable at this moment. Please share if you want to add any other reason and also share your feedback.

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A short note on Being Positive:

How come be positive in a negative situation?

You mean to say that we shouldn't worry whatever happens?

Positive thinking is just only taking positives and neglecting negatives in our life. In that case, are we not being blind for the negativity around us?

These are some of the questions, we face when we think about positivity. Aren't these true? or is there a misconception in understanding about being positive?

As a learner about positivity, I also had these questions and still searching the answers for many follow up questions. This post is to give what I understood so far. 

Being Positive
Image by Luisella Planeta LOVE PEACE 💛💙 from Pixabay 

Being positive neither means turning blind eye on the negativity around us nor not to worry about our situation. Being positive means, taking advantage of every situation and try to find opportunity or way out of nasty situations. 

Life is not a smooth boat ride. It may be simple sometimes and complex many times. Problems occur and life may become complex in a minute. Financial problems, Health issues, Relationship problems, you can name n number of issues in the world. How come one can be positive at such situations? Is it means, we have to accept whatever happens as fate? or have to wait for anyone to save us?

No one is gonna save you until you want to save yourself. The first thing one can do to save himself/herself is to believe in self. Again a jargon used by may positivity coaches? Absolutely NOT.

Being positive means, accepting the situation and trying to act according to that, means, according to the the current situation/problems, trying to figure out what is the available best course of action we can do to change the situation/problems. Sometimes you can find a way to solve the problems, sometimes you have to live with them but can ease the pain. 

It may be a bit rougher than you thought, if you landed in this page for some magic to solve all your problems. Being positive doesn't work in that way. 

For example, lets take the boat ride again. Boat rides may be smoother sometimes, but harder at the time of storm. Worrying when its harder is not gonna make it smoother. But trying the possible ways to sustain in storm makes you alive. The steps you take at the time of storm is not gonna guarantee that the storm will disappear or you can be safe for sure. But believing, the storm may go out of our way anytime and preparing for best solution available at current situation is called Being optimistic. Once you passed that problem, it becomes smaller and it becomes part of you legend. 

As Napoleon said, 

A genius is the man who can do the average thing, when all those around him are going crazy.

 Be the genius and Be positive.

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