Mistakes that prevent you from achieving your life goals

Setting up your goals seems like a very simple task. Just sit and write down the things you want to achieve. I'm sure you've done that multiple times, like at the end of the year when we usually set our new year's resolutions. But how many of those resolutions do you actually achieved twelve months later?

Most of the time, people fail to achieve their goals and resolutions, so we're here to give you a few tips that helped us a lot. We hope these help you to make things right this time 💪

1. Not being specific

"I want to lose weight". "I want to read more". These seem like nice goals on paper but at the same time, they are very vague. You can wake up the next day 1kg lighter or read a few pages one night, but that doesn't mean you've really achieved those goals.

"Lose 10kg in 6 months" or "Read 10 books this year" are better. Notice that we're being specific both in a specific metric (the kg and the number of books) and in time. By fighting ambiguity you'll avoid cheating or tricking yourself.

But don't worry, these two don't have to be written in stone! If you end up reading 8 books in a year, that'd be great as well! And you can always adapt your target date or metric as the weeks go by 😉

2. Forgetting your real motivation

A lot of times we decide we want to achieve a specific goal without even stopping to analyze what we want to accomplish by achieving that goal. In other words, we don't think about our real motivation.

Defining your motivation is a key to success. Our motivation is what will help us get out of bed the days we are feeling down.

3. Keeping them away

This error is very common when people do their new year's resolutions. I can't remember how many times I've written down my resolutions and goals on a piece of paper just to never see it again 😅

Our lives and priorities are constantly changing, so keeping your goals close to you and reviewing them every few months will help you stay on track, or just adjust them to your needs and priorities.

theLIFEBOARD makes it super easy to review your goals and edit them whenever you want.

Check out our guide to manage your goals in theLIFEBOARD.

4. Not breaking them down

I'm sure most of us have made this one. One of the consequences of setting up very ambitious goals is feeling overwhelmed, scared or just have no idea where to start. So if you find yourself in this situation, start by breaking things down and define milestones along the way.

You would not try to run a marathon without proper planning and training. You'll probably start training, and try to run 5km, then 10km, then a half marathon and, finally the full marathon. So try to apply the same approach with your long-term goals.

Milestones might be a small step in a long way but each one of them gets you closer to the finish line, so remember to celebrate them as they deserve.

You would not try to run a marathon without proper planning and training [...] So try to apply the same approach with your goals.

In theLIFEBOARD you can define milestones for your goals and review if you've achieved any of them every week. By focusing on the next milestone instead of the big goal, things should be a lot easier to handle.

5. Not tracking your progress

The easiest way to lose motivation towards your goals is not realizing how much you've progressed since you started. This is even more noticeable when working towards long-term goals. The weekly reviews built into theLIFEBOARD are a great way to analyze your progress but you can even do a more long term review every quarter.

You can't imagine how much of a motivation boost can give you to look back a few months and analyze your progress. And even if you realize you haven't progressed as much as you'd have wanted, it would be a good time to analyze why and try to correct the course.

We hope these tips help you define and work towards your goals. We're trying to make theLIFEBOARD the best tool for that so if you haven't already, give it try. We promise you'll love it!