Why Your Goals Keep Failing (And How to Stop the Cycle)
Let's talk about that moment when you're absolutely convinced this time will be different.
You're setting a new goal, maybe it's a New Year's resolution, maybe it's a random Tuesday in March, and you're fired up. Motivated. Ready to finally make this change happen. You can practically taste the success.
Fast forward a few weeks. Your motivation has quietly slipped away like a cat that doesn't want its nails trimmed. Everyday life has reasserted itself. Your goal has become another item on an ever-growing list of things you meant to do but didn't. And now you're beating yourself up for failing again.
Sound familiar?
This cycle isn't just frustrating, it's damaging. Every time we set a goal and abandon it, we chip away at our confidence. We start to believe we're the kind of person who can't follow through. We become hesitant to set goals at all because we're bracing for the inevitable disappointment.
We need to break this cycle. And breaking it starts with understanding why we fail in the first place.
The Five Reasons Your Goals Don't Stick
1. It's Not Actually Your Goal
This is the big one, and it's uncomfortable to admit.
The goal you're working toward isn't really your goal at all—it's someone else's goal for you. Maybe it's societal pressure telling you how you should look or act. Maybe it's family expectations about what career path you should follow. Maybe it's your doctor's recommendations, social media's curated version of what your life should be, or a partner's vision for your future.
Here's the harsh truth: if a goal isn't important and meaningful to you personally, you won't do the work to achieve it. You might think you should care about it. You might wish you cared about it. But if it's not truly yours, your motivation will evaporate the moment things get difficult.
2. You Don't Have a Strong "Why"
Even when a goal is genuinely yours, it needs fuel. That fuel is your "why" your compelling reason for pursuing this goal.
What's the point of working toward this? What do you hope to get from it? What impact will achieving this goal have on your life? The stronger and more personal your reason, the more likely you are to push through when things get hard. You'll stay focused and avoid getting distracted by shinier, easier things.
Conversely, if your "why" is weak or vague, you'll abandon ship the moment the work gets uncomfortable. Other priorities will suddenly seem more important, and your goal will quietly fade into the background.
3. Your Goal Is Too Vague
"I want to be happier." "I want to be healthier." "I want to get my life together."
These aren't goals, they're wishes without addresses. What does "healthier" actually mean to you? What would it look like? How would you know when you've achieved it?
It's nearly impossible to work toward something when you don't have a clear picture of where you're going. The more specific and concrete your goal, the more likely you are to achieve it.
4. You're Taking On Too Much at Once
There are two flavors of this mistake:
Flavor one: You're trying to change everything simultaneously. You're going to start exercising, eat healthier, learn a language, wake up earlier, meditate daily, and finally organize that closet—all starting Monday. Within two weeks, you're overwhelmed, unfocused, and burned out. Your energy is scattered across too many directions, and you end up achieving nothing.
Flavor two: You have one goal, but it's wildly unrealistic given your starting point. You currently don't exercise at all, but you've decided to do CrossFit for two hours a day, seven days a week. You're going from zero to sixty, and you burn out almost immediately.
Focus your time and energy on one goal at a time. Master it. Then add the next one.
5. You Think You Need to Be Perfect
Perfectionism is the enemy of progress.
When you believe you need to execute your goal flawlessly at all times, the inevitable stumble becomes catastrophic. You miss one workout, eat one unplanned cookie, or skip one day of your new habit, and suddenly you've "ruined everything." So you give up entirely.
The problem is obvious: none of us are perfect. We're all going to have setbacks. The people who succeed aren't the ones who never fail, they're the ones who plan for failure and keep going anyway.
Breaking the Cycle
Here's what we're going to do in this series:
We're going to build goals the right way, goals that are actually yours, goals with compelling reasons behind them, goals that are specific enough to pursue and realistic enough to achieve. We're going to set up your environment and habits to support success. And we're going to plan for setbacks before they happen.
This isn't another generic "SMART goals" article (though we'll cover that framework if you find it useful). This is about understanding why you keep failing and fixing those underlying issues.
Because the problem isn't you. The problem is how you've been taught to set goals.
Your First Step
Before we dive into the how-to of goal setting in upcoming posts, take some time this week to reflect honestly on your past goal failures. Not to beat yourself up, to gather intelligence.
Think about the last few goals you set and abandoned. For each one, ask yourself:
Was this really my goal, or was it someone else's goal for me?
Did I have a strong personal reason for pursuing this, or did it feel like something I "should" do?
Was my goal specific and clear, or was it vague?
Was I trying to change too much at once?
Did I abandon the goal after the first setback because I expected perfection?
Write down what you notice. These patterns are valuable information. You can't fix what you don't acknowledge.
In the next post, we'll dig into the single most important factor in goal success: your "why." We'll explore how to find it, how to strengthen it, and how to use it to fuel your progress even when motivation fades.
Because motivation always fades. Your "why" is what remains when motivation has left the building.
This is Part 1 of a 5-part series on setting meaningful goals. Continue reading to learn how to create goals that actually stick.