The 5 Things You NEED to Do to Hit Your Goals
Are you struggling to hit your goals? Do you feel like you are constantly having to restart or putting things off altogether? First, you're not alone. We've all done this. In fact, according to a study by the University of Scranton, 92% of people who set New Year's goals don't achieve them, leading to feelings of frustration and discouragement.
However, there is a bright side! Recent studies, like the one above, are part of the latest scientific research in goal achievement and positive psychology that are providing us with insight into how we can break the cycle of not achieving our goals. They are helping to provide a blueprint for how we can go from frustrated to happy by developing the same consistent, daily habits that have proven successful, according to research.
In fact, here are five things you can start doing RIGHT NOW to achieve your goals.
Stop Multitasking
If you want to hit your goals, you need to give up the idea of trying to do everything equally and hone in on your true priorities. The idea that we can do multiple things effectively all at once has been disproven by scientific research and yet we still view multitasking as an effective means to an end. In fact, in a 2009 study at Stanford, multitaskers continuously underperformed non-multitaskers when tested for attention span, memory, and the ability to be effective in tasks.
Want to get closer to achieving your goals? Take the time every morning to prioritize goal-related tasks first and on separately from any To-Do's. The best way to stop multitasking is to build a daily habit of true prioritization.
Embrace Criticism
We as humans have a tendency to seek validation from our peers. We often look for information that validates our viewpoint or current path while marginalizing alternative viewpoints in order to avoid criticism. After all, we much rather hear praise than harsh reality. This behavior of confirmation bias is often a major roadblock to self-improvement.
Being open to constructive criticism, the type a teacher or coach would give has numerous benefits that directly improve your ability to hit your goals including:
- Gaining new perspectives or more effective ways to reach your goal faster
- Learning how to handle and push through discomfort without defaulting to an initial emotional response
- Instilling motivation and competitive natural instinct to "prove people wrong"
While no one enjoys receiving criticism, when constructive, it is one of the best ways to improve and move forward on a path to achieving our goals.
Get Focused On Your Goals!
Panda Planner is the best-selling personal planner built on the latest research in positive psychology. Designed to make you more productive, better organized, and more focused on your daily path to hitting your goals!
This doesn’t mean that you need to pack up and move or get rid of your friends in order to be successful. It does mean that you should evaluate your environments (work, home, social) in terms of how they might be impacting your goals and see what you can do to improve it. Maybe that means signing up at the gym that is closer to work/home instead of the fancy one a few miles away or making new friends that share your passion for blogging.
3. Being Ungrateful
In a study of summer Olympians, researchers analyzed the emotional reactions of silver and bronze medalists both at the end of the event and on the medal stand. What they found was bronze medalists tended to be happier than silver medalists because they realized that the alternative outcome for them would be finishing without a medal at all. They were happy and grateful for the outcome of their hard work.
Practicing the daily habit of gratitude, even in the smallest of circumstances, builds a positive mindset for appreciating your successes. Those successes don’t have to be Olympic-level either. Studies show that measuring even the smallest daily “wins” builds a habit of appreciating your successes and looking forward to tomorrow.
"When I was creating the Panda Planner as I attempted to overcome my health issues of Lyme disease, traumatic brain injury, and cancer, I struggled to find very much appreciation for the progress I was making," notes Michael Leip, founder and creator of the best-selling personal planner Panda Planner. "After reading the latest research on gratitude, I found that if I focused on appreciating even the smallest wins each day, I was in a much better mindset to be grateful for what I accomplished and be ready to tackle tomorrow. That is why the End of Day Review in the Panda Planner plays such a critical role in the daily success of attaining my goals."
4. Focusing on Money as the Goal
A study of 450,000 Gallup surveys by Princeton economist Angus Deaton and psychologist Daniel Kahneman revealed that the impact of money on day-to-day happiness plateaus at $75,000 per year. More money had no noticeable impact on an individual’s day-to-day level of happiness. The study does reveal that higher incomes do lead to being more satisfied overall view of life, which isn’t surprising.
What this shows us is that focusing your day-to-day on money isn’t going to make you happier each day. And in fact, will often lead to less happiness because it is unattainable. If you give up focusing on the indefinable dollar amount of “more money” and instead, focus on developing better habits that will lead to being happier, more productive, and more focused, then your goals will become a lot more attainable.
5. Multitasking
The concept of multitasking always focuses on the ability to take on more. But at what cost? In a 2009 study at Standford, a sample of 100 students, half self-identified multitaskers, were tested on their abilities compared to non-multitaskers. The study, which tested attention span, memory, and the ability to effectively move from one task to the next, the multitaskers underperformed compared to the non-multitaskers each time.
As one of the researchers of the study noted, "They're suckers for irrelevancy. Everything distracts them." In an effort to take on more, we often end up doing less. If you want to hit your goals, you need to give up the idea of trying to do everything equally and hone in on your true priorities.
With Panda Planner, we decided that the concept of a To-Do list wasn't going to cut it if hitting your goals was the priority. To-Do lists open themselves up to distractions because there isn't a limit to the things you have to do on a given day. That is completely different than Priorities. Each day you should focus on your top 3-5 priorities. These aren't to-do's, they're must-do's. That way you can properly focus your day and evaluate what you accomplished based on what you needed to get done verses a list of things you would like to get done in equal order.
6. Society’s Vision for Your Life
"Strive for continuous improvement, instead of perfection." - Kim Collins, athlete
Pinterest boards, Instagram celebrities, vacation photos on Facebook. We are constantly surrounded by idealistic moments and images from others, even if those moments are staged or don't exist at all. If you're a working mom on Pinterest, how often do you see the ideal kitchen or living room, perfectly staged with all brand new items from Lowe's without a kid in sight? Amazing right?
What these images do is paint an unattainable picture of what your house, life, or body should look like without showing the truth of what it would actually take to achieve or maintain any of it. If you want to achieve your goals, you need to abandon what society has created as a perfectly marketed version of life and focus in on what your real goals are and the real plan of attack it takes to achieve them. It's good to use these images as inspiration or as part of a visual relation to your goals. But these are not goals in and of themselves.
7. Chasing Praise Instead of Valuing Criticism
Naturally, we as humans have a tendency to seek out validation from our peers. We seek to find information that confirms our own beliefs while giving less credence or consideration to alternative viewpoints or possibilities. Psychologists call this confirmation bias. We see it heavily in our current political landscape but it is also prevalent in our own daily lives.
It is very easy to elicit praise from family, friends, and coworkers. They love you and don't want to hurt your feelings!
And while it is great to surround yourself with that kind of positivity, if you want to hit your goals sometimes you need to seek out constructive criticism. Otherwise, you'll be potentially missing opportunities and different perspectives that cannot help you hit your goals but maybe even get there faster.
8. Looking for What's Next
“Don’t wish it was easier, wish you were better. Don’t wish for less problems, wish for more skills. Don’t wish for less challenge, wish for more wisdom.” – Jim Rohn
Speaking of valuing criticism, the above quote from Jim Rohn is about as blunt as it gets. The essence of his quote though isn’t “suck it up”, it’s that we need to stop looking for what’s next and focus on improving our present state. We find it easier to look beyond our “now” and look to what could be next. What this does is cut out all of the in-between. Thus, by missing the steps in between we’re always looking for the next opportunity, the next job, the next relationship. In the end, the next “X” never arrives because we haven’t focused in on what we can impact now.
This is at the core of goal planning, which we mentioned earlier. Setting the goal is the easy part but focusing on the “now” means:
- Evaluating your weaknesses and a daily plan to address them
- Identifying the specific steps you need to take to hit your goal
- Recognizing potential roadblocks along your path and steps to eliminate them
- Developing daily positive habits to reinforce your successes, big and small
All of the above require consistency. When we were developing the Panda Planner system, we wanted to build in the elements such as Daily Focus, Affirmation, How I’ll Improve, so that each and every day you’re consistently evaluating and developing the habits required to keep you focused on improving your now and not looking a week or month in advance. If you want to hit your goals, you need to give up worrying about what’s next and start being in the moment.
9. Being Afraid of Failure
In life, the only failure is when you stop trying or don’t try at all. As Winston Churchill stated, “Success is not final, failure is not fatal: it is the courage to continue that counts.” But failure has a tremendous mental impact on us that overcoming it can be a tremendous challenge. The more we can understand and identify failures mental impact, the better equipped we become to overcome it on our path to hitting our goals.
According to Psychology Today, these are just some of the negative impacts failure has on us mentally:
- Faliure distorts your perceptions of your abilities
- Failure makes you believe you're helpless
- A single failure experience can create an unconscious "fear of failure"
- Fear of failure often leads to unconscious self-sabotaging
- Fear of failure can be transmitted from parents to children
That’s a lot to bear as you handle setbacks on your road to hitting your goals. If we think about how we can give up being afraid of failure, we can start to formulate a plan for handling all of the above.
"When I was creating Panda Planner," said Michael Leip, "I experienced all of the above in some form. That is why I built in the daily habits such as identifying what I’m grateful for, a daily affirmation, and How I’ll Improve to make sure that I moved away from thinking I was helpless and doubting my abilities to positively reinforcing the fact that I should view failure as a step in the process to success. Not an end of any kind. Once I was able to give up fear of failure, I started to hit my goals."
In life, we are all striving to be better. That "better" could be improving upon what is already good or it can be tackling the most serious challenges you've ever faced. With the right approach, you can do all of this in your life and you'll be sure to hit your goals. But it is not easy. That is why a tool like Panda Planner, built from the latest positive psychology research, can help you tackle all of your goals, stay on track, and hit your goals faster or your money back!
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