What's Holding You Back?

Oftentimes we’ve set a goal, but don’t seem to make much progress toward its achievement. When faced with an unrealized goal, it’s easy to beat ourselves up for not making it happen.

If you’re not making the progress you’d like to be enjoying, there are several questions you can ask yourself in order to get to the heart of the matter.

What am I Afraid of?
I’d been working on a book for over a year. Most of it was done. I just seemed to find all kinds of other things to do instead of getting it ready for publishing. I began to wonder why I wasn’t going for it.

What came up was that I was afraid of having it published and not selling enough copies. As long as it never came out, I never had to deal with its possible failure.

This might seem obvious to you, but it wasn’t to me. I just thought I was procrastinating. I was, but the reason was at an almost unconscious level. By finding what was behind the procrastination, I was able to see what I needed to do.

Is it Really My Goal?
Sometimes we set goals because we think we should. Or we let other people set goals for us. When we don’t take the necessary action to accomplish our objective, it could be it’s because the goal is not truly ours. Any important goal requiring our best efforts must be ours and ours alone.

Is it Worthwhile?
Sometimes we set goals on a whim. Maybe you got excited about something and wrote down a goal. But later, it became just another item on the list of things to do. You’ve lost sight of the value this goal will bring to you.

If this is the case, begin to look at the payoffs in relation to what it’s going to cost you in time, energy and resources to achieve it. Some-times a goal just isn’t worth it.

And remember, it’s not about the goal. What’s really important is what you become in the pursuit of the goal.