Three Reasons Why You Won’t Attain Your Goals In 2015

1. Unwillingness to Break Habits.

People are habitual. We run on auto-pilot, and when we do we are able to use more brain power for fancy stuff like critical thinking, learning, introspection, and increasing our skills. The problem is habits tend to be deeply engrained and very hard to break, and we are the summation of our actions over time, not one meal or even one fantastic week.

If you've been crushing peanut butter and honey at night for 10 years, it’s going be hard to break that habit. It’s sweet and delicious, and maybe this year you will eat the bullet and switch to almond butter. But you notice what happened there - a deal was cut to keep the habit in place, and the big player was not addressed - all that fructose from honey may be bogging down your liver, messing with your sleep patterns at night, and completely derailing your weight loss. But it’s Paleo. Stop it. And that’s just one habit. Think about how many little quirky things you do that will rip apart any chance you have at attaining your health and fitness goals. In the end, it’s not the big things you add; it is the summation of little habits that you tweak or eliminate in a non-biased fashion. It’s not sexy, and it’s hard as shit. Be relentless, yet forgiving, and better yet find someone who can look at your situation critically from the outside in and give you quality advice.

2. Your Goals Suck.

I want to get shredded and run a marathon.
I want to find a wife I love and respect and have a really good time at bars.
I want to get unbelievably perfect at snatching, running, and muscle-ups, as well as crush everyone at my firm in Q1 sales.

These goals do not have numbers or timelines and they are in themselves highly unlikely because they have competing demands. They are horrible.

Let’s take this improvement for example.

Sarah's goal is to normalize her cortisol output in 90 days, lose 10 pounds without changing how much she eats, and have sex with her husband three times a week instead of watching Netflix at night. Now that is a goal I can get behind.

Or what about this?

Sam's goal is to gain 5 pounds of lean mass via a BodPod measurement on June 1st, download the app Freedom, and completely cut out social media and reactive email distractions between the hours of 7am - Noon during the work week, as well as to completely eliminate his consumption of Coors Light in 2015.

My clients make north of 20 changes like that in a year. We are constantly looking for limiting factors and how to turn them around or kick them to the curb. We generally take on one or two every few weeks and have tons of check-ins via text and in sessions. Give yourself simple concrete tasks and then hold yourself accountable.

3. No One Cares

This is the one I see the most. Your goals don't really align with your life, and you've cried wolf so many times everyone is over it. Instead of coming up with some cheap phony goals - take a Saturday morning or an entire weekend or week for introspection. Take a hard look at your limiting factors, the items that aren't on the table, and maybe even enlist someone that can help you identify the self-defeating things you do or habits you aren’t even aware are suffocating your chances for further success in 2015.

This is a powerful time of year. You can tap in and harness the energy to accomplish incredible feats or you can beat around the bush with fluffy goals and have a completely vanilla year.

By: Ben House