Why Haven’t You Reached Your Goals?

Written on June 27, 2024 - 9:47 pm | by Terra

That’s why I recently began changing the word “goal” to “promise” to make it more emotionally charged. My rationale was that if I made a promise to myself—even a very small one—I’d be much more inclined to keep it.

(The same thing happens when you change the word “time” to “life”. So, “I don’t have the time for that” becomes “I don’t have the life for that.” Much more powerful.)

For instance, one of my goals is to keep this blog updated with helpful, hopefully entertaining material about fitness and lifestyle from my perspective. Now, that’s a good goal. But if I frame it as a “promise”—as in, I promise to update this blog as long as I’m having fun and thousands of people still find what I have to say entertaining and informative—then it becomes something more than simply a goal. Now it feels like I’m going to let someone down if I don’t keep it. (Or make a few people very happy.)

The goals we make for ourselves are usually big—finish school, find a good job or fulfilling career, build an amazing body, secure a threesome with curvy Italian twins—but it’s the small promises we make that can make or break our momentum.

So something I’ve been toying with the past few weeks is deconstructing my big goals and outlining the smaller promises that will eventually lead to my success.

Let’s check out a typical goal.

Big Goal: Build an amazing body

Small Promises: 1) Read a book about working out and nutrition or hire a respected trainer. 2.) Drink a gallon of water per day. 3.) Eat healthy, smaller meals more often. 4.) Get eight hours of sleep. 5.) Stop drinking so much alcohol.

Even Smaller Promises: 1.) Actually go to the store and buy the freakin’ book or contact the trainer, then actually go to the gym and follow the program. 2.) Get a gallon water jug, fill it with water, put it in your fridge, and make sure it’s gone by the time you go to bed. 3.) Shop, prepare, and actually cook enough healthy meals and eat them at regular intervals. 4.) Count backward from when you need to get up, make sure it’s eight hours, turn off your TV, laptop, and iPhone, and get in bed. 5.) Limit yourself to five drinks per week, spread ‘em out how you want, and switch to water or diet soda after you reach your quota.

The way I see it, by making and keeping these small promises to ourselves we’ll build momentum and confidence that will make reaching our big goals more fun and less time-consuming. The small promises keep you on track even when you temporarily lose sight of the big goal.

And we don’t have to limit it to just our bodies. What about building a successful business? Or finding an attractive, compatible mate? What about just living a fulfilling, engaged, fun-as-hell life?

My advice is to list all your big goals, deconstruct them, then list all the smaller “promises” that will help get you there. Do them every day and you’ll soon find yourself much closer to accomplishing your big goal.

I promise.

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