Challenges and difficulties are inevitable. No matter what goals you set and what success you want to achieve in life, as long as you are moving forward, you will face challenges and difficulties. Unless you choose to do nothing, you will discover that there are obstacles stopping you from reaching your goals.
Successful people are able to produce extraordinary results in life not because they don’t have any problems, but rather, they face those problems and they overcome them.
On the other hand, unsuccessful people face similar difficulties and challenges too, but they choose to back down and stop moving forward. Which eventually, they give up and quit on their goals.
If you are serious about achieving your goals and living a successful life, you must learn how to overcome the challenges that you will definitely face on your journey in reaching your goals.
Here are 3 common challenges most people face when achieving their goals and the solutions what you can do to overcome them:
This is one of the most common challenges people face when it comes to achieving their goals. They simply don’t take action.
They find it difficult to execute because they lack motivation and willpower. They just don’t do anything after they set their goals. They feel paralyze and are not sure what to do.
If this is happening to you, here are some of the reasons why you’re stuck and not taking any action. Understand the root causes and then overcome this challenge by implementing the countermeasure.
Have too many goals
Do you have too many goals? Some people started with 100 goals, which is why they feel paralyzed because they simply not sure where to start. Having too many goals will make you feel lost.
One moment you want to work on project A, and the next moment you are distracted by project B, and then before you know it, project C requires your attention.
Hence, don’t fall into the trap of setting too many goals. You have many targets, but when it comes to achieving them, focus on just a few, like 1 or 2. Work relentlessly on just 1 or 2 goals at a time until you achieve them before you switch your focus.
You don’t have a specific action step
Another common reason people lack motivation and don’t take action is that they don’t have a specific action plan. They don’t know what to do.
For example, you set a goal to lose weight, but where should you start? You need to formulate a plan so that you can follow through.
Remember, you want to give specific instructions to your mind of what you need to do. If you don’t give clear instruction to your mind, you will end up feeling lost and distracted by other things.
This is why planning is important. Use the Implementation Intention technique to help you create a specific action plan so that you can work on it.
Setting unrealistic or vague goals
This is common sense. When you don’t believe you can achieve your goal, you will never want to take action. Even if you choose to take action, you will never put in 100% effort for it.
This is because if you don’t believe you can do it, why even try? Your subconscious mind will sabotage your actions and your goals. You will never do it with your full effort. And this is what happens when you set unrealistic or vague goals.
Think about it, if you are in debt and are earning $3,000 a month, but you set a goal to earn a million dollars in 6 months, your mind will sabotage this goal. You will never hit the goal because it is unrealistic to you at the moment.
Unless you are willing to think out of the box and do something different, the goal will never be possible.
So, don’t set vague and unrealistic goals. Your goals are supposed to inspire you and drive you into taking action, not preventing you from moving forward.
If you have no idea how to set goals and create plans to achieve them, use Goal Setting Formula. It is a program I created to help people set empowering goals that will drive them and achieve greater success in life.
Lack of commitment and accountability
Another common reason people don’t take action is the lack of commitment and accountability. They are not truly committed to their goals, and that is why they only do what is convenient. Whenever they face difficulties, they choose to procrastinate and quit on their goals.
You can’t just keep your goals to yourself because if you do that, no one is there to hold you accountable. When no one is holding you accountable, you will choose to do something else rather than working on your goals, after all, there is no one there to monitor progress and encourage you.
What you need to do is to put yourself on the line. You want to be 100% committed to your goals so that you will do whatever it takes to get the results you desire.
At the same time, you will need to create accountability by sharing your goals and progress so that others can know what you have done.
The second common challenge you may face is not getting the results you want even after you have taken massive action.
There will be times when you feel like you have done all the hard work, but you’re not progressing forward and not producing the results you want. When this happens, here are some of the things you need to consider:
Short-term VS long-term thinking
You have to understand that some goals will never happen instantly. For example, you can’t work out for just one day and hope that all the additional fat on your stomach will be gone. You can’t exercise and build 6-pack abs with just one workout session.
You need to have patience. You have to understand that the bigger the results you want, the more time you will need to get there.
It is easy to fall into thinking and believe that people are able to create success quickly and easily. When we see someone successful, we only see the surface, but we tend to neglect the effort and time that they have put in to make it all work.
We all know that Lionel Messi is a very talented football player, but do you know that he did not become who he is today in just weeks or months? Here’s what he said:
“I start early, and I stay late, day after day, year after year. It took me 17 years and 114 days to become an overnight success.”
Sometimes you just need to be patient and let your action brings you the results you want.
Are you working on the low-impact tasks?
If you think that you have done your best but are not getting the results you want, ask yourself if you are working on the low-impact tasks.
The key to creating extraordinary success is to focus on high-impact work. You don’t want to be busy for the sake of being busy. You want to be effective. You want to focus and put in your effort into doing the work that gets you the most result.
For example, if you are in sales, your key action to create more sales is prospecting. You want to approach more people so that you can close the sale. If you focus your energy in making the presentation, updating your website or database, learning, etc., those activities are not going to directly get you the sales you want.
Hence, work on the high-impact tasks that give you the most results. You don’t want to work on whatever that you can think of, you want to follow the Pareto’s 80/20 Rule and do the most important thing first.
Change your strategy
What if you have done everything but still are not getting the success you want? Then, perhaps, you may be doing the wrong thing. Perhaps, you are using the wrong strategy.
You have to understand that if you are running in the wrong direction, no matter how fast you run, you will end up in the wrong place.
What you need to do then is to review your strategy and see if you are climbing a ladder that is leaning against the wrong wall.
You don’t want to work for years only to discover that you are doing things the wrong way. This is why learning and improving are important. You want to constantly measure your progress and keep yourself on the right track.
When you face problems, obstacles, and roadblocks in your journey to reaching your goals, don’t give up. Instead, find out how to overcome them. As I have said, problems and challenges are common. In fact, they are inevitable.
As long as you are making progress, you will face difficulties and challenges. That’s just life. So, what do you need to do when you have problems achieving your goals? Here are some suggestions…
Seek help from experts
Get help. You can’t be successful by yourself. You need help and support from others. And make sure you get help from the right people.
First, check out the experts and gurus in your industry. They have been doing it for years and they have the experience to help you. Next, check with people who have been there. You don’t want to ask someone who has never invested in the stock market for advice, you want to seek advice from someone who has been successfully doing it.
The problem with most people is that they choose to listen to their friends and relatives who are not successful and who are not an expert. If you choose to listen to people who have never done it before, you will get the wrong advice.
This is why learning from the right sources is important. You don’t want to follow the wrong steps and set the wrong goals, use this proven formula to set the empowering goals that will move you forward.
Think out of the box
Next, think out of the box. It is not about the resources you have, it is about how resourceful you are. If you read biographies of successful people, you will understand that most of them started from scratch. They don’t have the resources like capital, knowledge, and skills, but they are resourceful and creative enough to create the results.
Thus, stop making excuses on why things will never work. Choose to think creatively for the solutions.
Whatever you want to achieve, someone out there has probably achieved it. Hence, ask for their opinions and learn from them.
Improve your knowledge and skills
Besides seeking help from others, what you need to do is to constantly work on improving yourself. You want to gain more knowledge and improve your skills.
Challenges and problems are always there. And the only way to overcome them is to grow yourself to become bigger than them. When you are bigger than your problems and challenges, they will threaten you anymore.
Like what Harv Eker often said:
“The size of the problem is never the issue, what matters if the size of you.”
Once you have grown wiser and gained better skills, your problems will never be a problem anymore.
Learn and move forward
It really doesn’t matter what kind of problems or challenges you face, you can always learn from it and move forward. Even if you have failed, you can only become better.
People learn more from failure than from success. However, you must reframe your mindset and treat failure as feedback. Tell yourself that there is no failure, only feedback.
This is what J.K. Rowling, the billionaire author said about failure:
“It is impossible to live without failing at something unless you live so cautiously that you might as well not have lived at all – in which case, you fail by default.”
So, don’t be afraid of failure because there is no way you can live without it. And she also continues to say…
“Failure is so important. We speak about success all the time. It is the ability to resist failure or use failure that often leads to greater success.”
Remember, failure builds your character.
So, if you fail at your goals, don’t worry, learn from it, and then move forward and start over again, wiser this time.
Whenever you face problems and challenges in your journey to achieving greater success in life, don’t say “why me”, say “try me”.
Stay strong and have the courage to face difficulties. It is common to have challenges in achieving your goals. And it doesn’t mean you should give up or quit.
Take the challenge and grow stronger.
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Solution: Don't confuse overconfidence with mental strength. Rather than tell yourself it's going to easy, remind yourself you're going to need to work hard to achieve your goals, despite whatever skills and talents you already possess.