Have you identified your goals? Are you working toward them? Have you established an action plan? Do you have a list of things you'll need to do to succeed? You've probably done all those things if you're serious about reaching your goal. You may have already completed some of your plan and you believe you're doing everything you can to reach your goal. But, are you making progress? Really? Or, are you spinning your wheels wondering when you'll get some traction and start moving?

I read a book a few years ago that dealt with something related to those questions. How do we normally go about trying to achieve a goal? We write the goal down, put an action plan together, put the actions in sequence, and start working toward the goal. We try to list everything that we think we're going to have to do to reach the goal. Dates might be given for the completion of each major step.

That's all good, in fact, these things are probably recommended in just about every book you read about setting and achieving goals.

So, why aren't you making progress? Here's the tip (well, one of them) I found in that book. If you've created a list of things that you believe you'll have to do to reach your goal, you must also be willing to do everything on that list! You could have 5 items or 105 on your list, it wouldn't matter. You have to be willing to do each and every one of them.

Every one? Yes. If there's one thing on that list that causes you to say "No, I won't do that, but I'll worry about it when I get there," you've probably doomed yourself to failure. You haven't even started working the items, but you have almost no chance of succeeding. Why is that?

If you're committed to your plan you're committed to doing everything on your list. If you're not willing to do all of them, you're not committed to your plan! In fact, you're really not committed to your goal because you've set a limit on its value to you. You are setting yourself up to fail! And, commitment is one of the most important things you need to accomplish a goal!

Why is that? Look at what's really happening. If you've identified an action you believe is necessary that you are not willing to do, you've reduced or destroyed your motivation for doing the steps leading up to it. Think about it. Assume your plan has 31 items on the list. Item 22 is the one you won't be willing to do.

You get started and work through items 1 through 11. Great! Now it's time to get started on number 12. You start making excuses for not getting on with the plan. You're not excited about getting started on number 12, but you don't know why. Number 12 is something you're really interested in, and it's not a big item. You could knock it out quickly and be ready for number 13. So, what's going on?

Well, number 13 is one closer to that dreaded number 22, and you don't know what you're going to do when you get to that one. Your emotional commitment drops. Why? Because you're not looking at number 12 with excitement, you're looking ahead at number 22 with dread, and the dread is killing the excitement.

The sad part of this (and this is what the book reminded me of) is that you might not really need to do number 22. If you're working on a long-term goal and the problem item won't hit you for a year or two, it's entirely possible that there will be a different solution by the time you get there. It might not even be a problem! You are being blocked by something that may not even exist.

This is why you have to commit to doing all the items on your list. Once you do that, you're truly committed; and you have every reason to expect to succeed. Don't allow your lack of commitment to kill your odds for success.

Copyright (c) 2008 Dale Stuemke