Crossing the Finish line- THAT"s the part of the goal to focus on

byardieterle

169 followers

5 years ago

I am a big reader- I spend at least 15-20 minutes every day reading self-help or instirational books to help keep me motivated and keep a positive mindset through my day. This last week I've been reading a book that has made me really rethink how I look at goals and how I measure my success in completing them.

The book is simply titled "Finish" by Jon Acuff. What I LOVE about this book is that he breaks down why people quit their goals. He claims that 92% of goals people start they never finish. We start our goals with big dreams and aspirations- THIS time we're going to lose those pesky 20 pounds or THIS time I'm going to write and publish a novel.

We get started and do great for a few days, then something happens and we don't get our workout in for the day or we don't find time to write our alloted time or number of pages for the day. Since we got behind we end up giving up. We weren't perfect- we didn't meet our daily steps so we will never meet our end goal.

Jon writes that perfection is an illusion- something I totally agree with and have for awhile. Nobody can sustain perfection. We all make mistakes, we all have off days, sick days, tasks we just don't have time or energy to complete. We may start out perfect, but after a couple of days or couple of weeks we have a day we don't accomplish whatever our daily goal was. And that is usually when we give up- we missed a day so we think we have to give up because we can't get back on track. We've ruined our perfect streak on this goal.

This is the part that really hit me- we're in control of our goals and our progress towards them. It's rarely a situation where meeting our goal requires perfection every single day, because that is never going to happen. It's rarely that we HAVE to meet a specific goal at a specific deadline (unless the goal is given to you by an employer). It's not an all or nothing or now or never situation. We are human, we won't be perfect, but we can adjust our plan and still reach our goal, just maybe not at the original planned time or amount.

If we get started on a goal and find that we aren't quite there we can give ourselves more time or cut the goal in half so we can still reach that goal, eventually. We can start and quit a million goals in our life but if we don't FINISH a goal it doesn't really count. It's like climbing a mountain or running in a race. It's not how fast you reach the end or how big of a mountain you decide to climb- the important thing is that you FINISH. Keep going, keep motivated and you will get there.

It made me think of my blogging. There are so many blogs out there that people start writing with every good intention of being consistent and earning a small fortune with, only to get frustrated with not being able to write consistently or draw in enough traffic initially. It takes time and persistence to get a blog up and running. But there's NOT a set end time for a blog. Go your speed, write consistently even if it is only one or two posts a week. If you give up you are guarenteed that you won't meet your goals but if you keep going, keep plugging away, update your goals and deadlines as you go and keep the end in sight you WILL eventually cross the finish line.

So stop setting a goal and giving up when you don't maintain perfection. Stop giving up because you haven't made the progress you thought you should or could have done. If the goal is important to you, KEEP GOING! Adjust your goal, adjust your timeline if you need to, but CROSS THE FINISH LINE!

Good luck everyone!