How To Achieve Your Goals (Every Time)

Hello and welcome to episode 170 of the Working With Podcast. A podcast to answer all your questions about productivity, time management, self-development and goal planning. My name is Carl Pullein and I am your host for this show.

We have reached that time of year where over 80% of the goals set on January 1st have been dropped. Where resolutions, goals and new good habits are just a distant idea and where old habits and practices have returned.

That’s a terrible statistic—80% of all new year goals and resolutions fail by the first week of February. Yet it really does not have to be that way. Achieving a goal is possible for everyone if it is approached in the right way. And how to do that is what I will be answering this week.

Now before we get to the question and answer, I would just like to let you know that we have been celebrating the Lunar New Year here in Korea over the weekend and to celebrate the new year, I have put together a bundle of my finest courses to help you go from where you are today to where you want to be in the future.

This bundle includes the Time Sector System, my Productivity Masterclass AND Your Digital Life 3.0. With these three courses, you will have everything you need to create your own time management and productivity system, you will learn the skills to develop an organisation system that makes finding your files and notes quick and easy and you will learn a way of managing your email that takes the stress and overwhelm out of dealing with a massive amount of email.

Plus, as part of Your Digital Life 3.0, you also get free access to my Ultimate Goal Planning course—so a course relevant to today’s question.

Normally, if you buy all three of these courses it would cost you over $180, but for the Lunar New Year, you can pick up this bundle for just $99.00.

You will have to hurry, as this bundle will be ending on Wednesday 17th Feb. Full details on how to pick up this bundle can be found in the show notes.

Okay, it’s time for me now to hand you over to the mystery podcast voice for this week’s question

This week’s question comes from Ashley. Ashley asks, Hi Carl, I’ve heard you speak about goals and goals planning before and wondered if you have any tips for someone who fails every time they set a goal. I’ve failed so many times now I just laugh at myself every time I think about setting a goal. Is there anything I can do that would help me to set and achieve goals?

Hi Ashley, thank you for your question.

Now, this is a timely question because last week I did a talk for Todoist’s Office Hours series where we talked about goal setting and tracking using Todoist and as I was preparing for that talk, I went through the three main components and tried to think of better ways to explain why each part is important.

So, let’s start there.

There are three parts to achieving a goal: What, why and how.

This translates to what do you want, why do you want it and how will you do it.

Now you need to be very clear about what it is you want. It’s no good saying “I want to lose weight” or “I want to earn more money” while you might think these are clear they do not specify exactly what you want. How much weight do you want to lose and by when? How much more money do you want to earn and by when? Unless you know this, then if you skip dinner tonight and weigh yourself tomorrow you will likely to have achieved your goal. Or your boss could say, okay I’ll give you an extra $5.00 per month—probably not what you had in mind.

So get very specific about what it is you want:

I want to lose ten pounds by the end of March. I want to earn an extra $1,000 per month by July.

What do you want and by when do you want to have achieved it?

That’s fairly straight forward.

Now the mistake most people make is they decide what they want then move straight to how they are going to do it.

Now, let’s look at why this is a problem. Everyone knows how to lose weight. It’s a very simple formula: eat less, move more. Now we could argue about the semantics and talk about the types of foods you should be eating, but even if you are eating the healthiest foods, if the calories going in are higher than the calories coming out, you will still gain weight.

No matter what goal you want to achieve, all you need do is spend a little time on Google and you will find all you need to know about how to achieve it. If you want to become an astronaut and spend some time on the International Space Station and do a spacewalk, Google it and you will find a road map explaining everything you need to know and do to become an astronaut.

The difficulty in achieving your goals is never about the how. How to do it will be well documented. How to save money, how to earn more money, how to get your dream job, how to become a doctor. Whatever your goal is the how to do it, will never be a problem.

So, if you know what you want and you know—or can at least find out—how to do it, then why do so many people fail at achieving their goals?

It’s because their reasons for achieving those goals are not powerful enough.

The key part to achieving your goals, Ashley, is in your reasons for wanting to achieve your goals.

How to lose weight is easy. If you eat less and move more you will lose weight. However, there is one factor that will always get in the way. Hunger. When you reduce your calories sufficiently to lose weight your body will tell you it does not like eating less food and so will produce a chemical response in your brain to tell you you are hungry and you must eat something right now.

However, it is unlikely you will feel hungry first thing in the morning when your willpower it at it’s highest, you are more likely to feel hungry later in the day when your willpower is at it’s lowest.

This means your reasons for wanting to lose weight need to be stronger than your body’s reason for not wanting to feel hungry.

So, if you have decided you want to lose weight, then why? Why do you want to lose weight? It is for cosmetic reasons—you want to look good? Is it for health reasons—you don’t want to develop diabetes? Why do you want to lose weight?

Likewise with earning more money, or complete a masters’ degree or getting a promotion at work. Why do you want to do these things?

When your reasons for wanting something are strong enough, your motivation for sticking to your plan—the how—will be stronger than the forces pulling on you to stop making these changes.

You see our minds and bodies do not like change. We love habits. We love routines. It’s why we feel tired around the same time each day and why, if you allowed it, we would wake up quite naturally without an alarm clock. It’s why, weirdly, the amount of money we earn is usually roughly the same as the amount of money our friends earn. We love stasis. We hate change.

But, if you really want to achieve your goals you will have to change. You will have to go through a period of discomfort where your mind and body is fighting you to get back to it’s comfort zone.

You know the most dangerous place anyone can be is when they are earning enough money to feel comfortable. To be able to drive a reasonably nice car, to live in a nice house in a nice neighbourhood. To have a comfortable job with a stable company. That is a very dangerous place to be because the fear of losing any of that will always be stronger than the desire to improve and change. So changing anything will scare you. The problem is change is inevitable.

There will come a time when your company wants to make changes, you may perhaps reach an age where you will not be able to progress further in your company and younger colleagues begin to pass you on the promotion chain and your worst fears will become a reality and begin to live a life of fear, dread and anxiety.

So, for you to begin achieving your goals you need to reset your comfort zone. You need to become uncomfortable being where you are today. You need to be uncomfortable weighing what you weight today. You need to be uncomfortable earning what you are earning today and you need to be uncomfortable not knowing what you need to know to perform at your best.

So how do you find strong reasons for wanting a goal?

Well, in my experience, the stronger the emotional attachment to your reason the more likely you will succeed. I’m reminded of the story of a successful businessman who had everything he wanted. A great job, a wonderful family, a nice car and house etc.

He was also a very heavy smoker. Smoking was his pleasure. He would sit down in his favourite armchair and smoke every evening. His doctor, his wife and friends all urged him to stop smoking but he refused, telling them smoking was his one pleasure in life.

Then one day his five-year-old daughter came into his room crying. She was saying “Daddy, I don’t want you to die” He calmly said, “I’m not going to die honey”.

“No Daddy, you are going to die” she replied pointing to his cigarette.

At that moment, he stopped. He realised he wanted to be there to walk his daughter down the aisle on her wedding day and to play with his future grandchildren. At that moment, he got a very powerful reason for quitting smoking. From the very next day, this guy never smoked a cigarette again. And, yes he did walk his daughter down the aisle and got to play with his grandchildren.

You see, when you make you reasons for wanting to achieve your goal incredibly powerful by making them emotional, you will succeed no matter how hard it is because you will have a reservoir of motivation for those days when things are very tough.

So, make what you want clear. Be very specific about what it is you want. Make your why a powerful, emotional reason for wanting to achieve this goal and change your habits and behaviours so they fall in line with your desired outcome.

However, there is another level to consistently achieving your goals. That level is who do you want to become? How do you want to live your life? What do you want to be doing in ten or twenty years time? What kind of lifestyle do you want to live? What do you want for your family and friends?

This is what I call your North Star. Your North Star is your journey. It takes you in the direction you want to live your life. If you have a, as Tony Robbins calls it: “A compelling vision of how you want to live your life” then your goals, your habits and your daily activities will follow suit.

When your goals align with your long-term vision of the life you want to lead, you will find achieving your goals becomes easy because as you journey towards building the life you want, all you will be doing is making tiny adjustments to the way you live your life today. It’s why you will often hear: “most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in a decade”

When you are working towards a longer-term vision the changes you need to make are much more manageable.

I’m sure many of you have heard of the book called “The Secret”. The book’s premise is that if you want it, if you desire it and if you can imagine having it, then you can have it. It’s as the Bible says “ask and you will receive”. Well, it turns out there is some truth to this.

If we ask questions like “why can’t I lose weight?” Your brain will answer that question. It will give you all the reasons why you cannot lose weight. Same for “why do I never get promoted?” And “Why can’t I find the love of my life?” That’s exactly what you will get—reasons why you cannot do something.

Change the question and you will get different answers. Instead of asking why you cannot lose weight, ask “what do I have to do to lose ten pounds?” “What skills do I need to learn to get promoted?” “Who do I need to talk to to find the love of my life?”

These questions will give you a list of all the things you can do to achieve your desired outcome.

So there you go, Ashley. It’s not that you cannot achieve your goals, you can achieve your goals, but you need to begin focusing on your why. Why do you want to achieve these goals? How will being successful with your goals align with your future vision? Get this part of the equation right and you will no longer have any difficulties achieving your goals.

Thank you for your question, Ashley, and thank you to you for listening. Don’t forget to check out my Lunar New Year bundle. There is something in there for everyone.

It just remains for me now to wish you all a very very productive week.