First and foremost before going into set goals, what are goals? Goals are the desired result envisaged by a person or group of people towards the future with the aim and purpose of achieving them. Success is goals and goals determine success. All successful people have their set goals at the back of their minds. Unsuccessful people don’t set goals. Successful people know what they want and focus on it. Setting a goal is a master skill of success i.e no goals, no success.
Picture any sport, taking football as an example, the goal of the match is to put the ball at the back of the net. Without that goal, there is no need for playing a football match. The same illustration applies to life, without goals, you live an unexamined life which according to Socrates is not worth living. With goals, you fly like an arrow, straight and true to your target.
- In reality, you actually put the ball inside the net
There’s a possibility that you probably have more than enough natural potential that you can use in a thousand lifetimes. Whatever has been achieved so far is actually fractions of what can be achieved by you. Do you want to achieve more? If yes, you set more goals.
A clear goal is most times achieved because clear goals increase your confidence, develop your competence and boost your level of motivation.
You become what you think about most of the time. Your exterior is just a reflection of what your interior looks like. It mirrors back to you what you think about. Whatever you think about continuously emerges in reality.
- Unlike your normal mirror, there’s no lateral displacement
Successful people think about what they want and how to get what they want which is their goals, so they get their goals by paying the price required to get to their goals. However, unsuccessful people discuss anything but what they want. They talk about their problems and worries, and who is to blame most of the time.
Living without a goal is like starting a journey without a destination. I doubt it’s of any use to do that. But having a destination makes the journey meaningful. The same thing applies to life. Set goals give your life meaning, it’s proof that you have a purpose. An added incentive is that it leads to success.
Funny enough, humans have goal-achieving abilities. When you are actually clear about your set goal by simply deciding exactly what you want, you will begin to move directly towards your goal, and your goal will start to move directly towards you. At the right time and the right place, you and the set goal will meet.
However, many people do not have clear, written, measurable, time-bounded goals that they work toward each day. This is still a mystery and we may want to know why. Well these are some of the reasons people do not set goals
12 Strong Reasons Why People Don’t Set Goals
1. NO PROPER ORIENTATION ABOUT SET GOALS
I personally believe that no proper orientation would be the first reason people hardly or do not set goals.
Just like a computer cannot give an output of what has not already been inputted so also we cannot uphold certain habits we have little or no orientation or were not brought up with while growing up as children.
When our parents or guardians are not goal-setters and goal-getters, the child eventually grows up not being any different, Of course as we all know fruit doesn’t fall far from the tree.
Due to this reason, a lot of children grow up not knowing what setting goals entails because there’s no grooming from parents, elder siblings, relatives, or childhood advisors when they themselves do not see the importance of these goals, which takes us to reason number 2
2. FEELING SET GOALS ISN’T IMPORTANT
Most people feel that goals are not important because they don’t even know the importance of goals and neither do they believe in the achievement of set goals.
As stated earlier, parents cannot impart to their children the proper orientation because they are ignorant and probably do not realize the importance of goal setting and its role in our success story.
Most of the time people imbibe such a mentality not because they have the assurance that goals really aren’t important but because they just don’t know how to set these goals which takes us to reason number 3
3. THEY DON’T KNOW HOW TO SET GOALS
Often times people do not set goals because they do not actually know how to even set these goals. We would all presume we know until we try and realize we actually have the wrong mentality about goal setting.
Many people think that they have set goals, when in reality what they actually have are a series of wishes or probably fantasies. Of course, it can be okay to set the bar high but even while setting the bar high, setting goals entails being realistic but at the same time breaking limitations.
People come up with wishes such as “I want a lovely home”, “I want to buy a Mercedes” “I want a lot of money in the future”. They say all of these and call them goals not realizing that these aren’t actual goals but wishes that are merely common to everyone. A goal, of course, is distinctively different from mere wishes.
A goal is precise and specific. A goal is a well-laid-down plan for its achievement. A goal doesn’t just tell you what you want to achieve but it goes as far as creating ways how to go about achieving what you want and you would be able to precisely tell when you have achieved it. We have short and long-term goals as well as daily goals.
Mind you; our daily goals are paramount to our short-term goals, the same way our short-term goals are paramount to our long-term goals, that is to say; you can’t create long-term goals without having a detailed plan for achieving short-term goals while on the journey of your long term goals.
3. DISAPPOINTMENTS OVER PREVIOUS SET GOALS
It so happens that even when some people have a good background orientation on goal setting and are aware of its importance, they still do not set goals because of past disappointments.
Many a time we set goals and have high expectations with hopes of achieving them but then, many a time we find ourselves really disappointed when we do not achieve these set goals of ours.
The majority of all the great men we see today would most likely count their disappointments as well as failures while narrating their success stories. So it happens that these past disappointments then lead to reason number 5
4. FEAR OF FAILURE
This is known as Atychiphobia. It is the single greatest barrier to success.
As earlier stated, past disappointments have a fair share in creating this phobia that even those who have never set goals or have been disappointed find it difficult to do so because they are scared and filled with negative thoughts of ‘it wouldn’t work out when undertaking other challenges even before trying, but hey, ever thought of putting your mind to it and making it work?
Most people now are more frightened about the failure to achieve a goal than the optimism of actually achieving it.
Individuals coping with Atychiphobia mainly fear failure because they lack confidence in their abilities and what they can achieve. Persons with the fear of failure often give up trying unless they have been guaranteed or assured of success or perfection in certain tasks.
Atychiphobia is often linked to traumatic or embarrassing events in one’s past. Strict or overly demanding parents or demeaning siblings or friends can also lead a child to suffer extreme fear of failure.
Minor failures in one’s childhood that could have caused embarrassment or ridicule. And no one wants to be found feeling stupid. But what we fail to realize is that “failures are not failures but motivation to put more effort and do better”-DollyMchottney
And Often times these failures are usually as a result of having No passion which takes us to point number 6
5. NO PASSION
In some other cases, some people do not set goals because they already have their lives mapped out for them even before birth. They find themselves not being able to set goals because they have little or no passion for their supposed goal.
These are cases where families want a certain standard and insert a certain mentality of what they want for you [it could be a situation of career choice which is very rampant] and you can barely go for what you want.
You find yourself growing up into such, sometimes it could also fall into what we want for ourselves but other times it just might not. Also, in cases where we are bred in strict homes where it seems as though we have little or no choice, we do it just to fulfill all righteousness, we often find ourselves not putting much into it or even having any form of setting goals because there is no passion.
“The goal motivator “Passion” heightens the achievement of Set goals” -DollyMchottney
6. FEAR OF THE FUTURE
This is an actual and specific type of phobia known as chronophobia. It is defined as the persistent and often irrational fear of the future or the fear of passing time.
Chronophobia affects different people differently and it oftentimes has a role to play in the relenting attitude toward goal setting.
A young man suffering from this phobia, for example, might suddenly drop out of college where most people his age are busy with the goal of successfully graduating from college and preparing for their future.
In this context, I would associate this to fear of the unknown which is known as xenophobia which comes in many guises.
The fact that life itself is a mystery and we have many questions with no answers could trigger the fear of the unknown leading to overwhelming thoughts that could to an extent affect one’s daily life and activities and hinder them from achieving or setting goals.
7. INFLUENCE FROM FRIENDS
I earlier spoke about not having proper orientation from our family backgrounds. But then even when some people happen to have good orientation from their various homes.
They enter into the school system and mingle with or keep friends who lack this orientation of goal setting and do not see the reason to. And as we all know that bad association is a killer of good habits.
Of course, at first, you could be setting goals but then with time, you would most likely find yourself not seeing reasons as to why you should thereby adapting to their mentality eventually.
It’s general knowledge that birds of the same feathers flock together. Constant association or mingling with people who do not see reasons for having set goals eventually rubs off on you. And then sooner or later you find yourself not seeing reasons as to why you should set goals.
see also: qualities of a good friend
8. NONCHALANT/WRONG MINDSET OVER SET GOALS
Most people are actually very nonchalant and take the setting of goals very lightly because they carry the wrong mindset. The mindset of “let us drink and eat for tomorrow we are to die”.By this, I simply mean the popular belief of we only live once has hindered a lot of people from setting goals.
They obviously do not care or see reasons to. They take life as it comes with the nonchalant belief of life is meant to be enjoyed and goal setting is not essential because we do not actually know tomorrow, after all, you only live once[YOLO].
They carry this mindset forgetting that in true light we actually live every day and die once. And at some point in our lives, we have to actually know the difference between enjoying life and destroying the future. #wizdom
9. LAZINESS
Certainly, a good percentage of people do not set a goal for no other reason other than laziness.
Although one may have a good and complete understanding of how important goal setting is and how it could improve their life and successes, then the desire to act on that understanding may just not be there.
And that’s the whole summary of laziness against goal setting. Obviously, a lazy man cannot be a goal setter, neither can he be a goal-getter because in order to achieve a goal one must be willing to work, be determined, and leave their comfort zone.
“Goal getters are never lazy workers” -DollyMchottney
10. PROCRASTINATING SET GOALS
So Tasha finished reading the importance of goal setting and said with so much motivation “from tomorrow henceforth I would start setting goals and work towards it” but then tomorrow comes knocking and she spends her day sleeping, watching TV, etc and then said “I would start the following day”.
Well, guess what? Tasha ended up having no goals. “Why start tomorrow when you can start today”. Procrastination is intertwined with laziness. A lot of people actually do plan to set goals but the attitude of procrastination makes it end in just plans leaving them stagnant at square one with no goals because there is no self-discipline which takes us to our final point
see also: the dangers of procrastination
11. LACK OF SELF DISCIPLINE
The act of self-discipline actually starts with our daily goals. Discipline is a very important tool in goal setting and this important tool is lacked by a great number of people which eventually makes it difficult for them to actually set goals.
I can remember vividly when I started mapping out daily goals and trying to imbibe the act of self-discipline, it was a major war.
I find myself on wagon one moment and the next moment I find myself falling off the wagon oftentimes as though there is obviously no need of writing out another set of goals for the day that I won’t follow.
I am pretty sure a lot of people might have been in such a situation once or twice and resulting in them saying “there’s no need” because they lack self-discipline.
I could totally relate but here’s the trick; yes its okay to fall off the wagon once or twice but the real discipline is the act of sitting down to map out those goals daily while trying harder every day to achieve them and with time, gradually you would realize you did better than the previous day and before you know it you slowly incorporate the act of discipline in goal setting
See Also;
5 Types Of Goals To Help Take Your Life To The Right Direction
20 unknown factors preventing you from achieving your goals
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