What if I Don’t Achieve My Goals?

Who is ready to get a little bit better? If so, say YES! I typically don’t time stamp my blogs just in case I post them out of season/order. But we only have a few weeks left in 2022. And some of you have already gone to that melancholy place because you’ve started to reflect upon your year… and are thinking you didn’t meet some of your goals. Maybe you went back and read your journal and it was really easy to get in a place of discouragement because you didn’t do what you thought you should. So ask yourself, What if I didn’t accomplish my goals? What do I do with that? 

And so I am going to bring you a very familiar framework that I have taught many times and give full credit to Dan Sullivan and Dr. Benjamin Hardy for writing the phenomenal book, The Gap and The Gain. If you have not read it, do yourself a favor and read it.

Here’s the framework, we live our lives and look at what we have achieved. And because you, my friend, are a high achiever, you look at what you have achieved and then you look at the ideal of what you wanted to achieve. And because what you have achieved never hits the ideal… you end up living in a space called the gap. 

The. Big. Old. Gap. 

You haven’t hit the ideal, which by the way is a static thing or a moving target BECAUSE when you hit something, achieve something, make the mark… there’s always something more. There’s always bigger and better. There’s always the next thing. When you are going after the next level and you are living in the gap…

I know the feeling, this is what happened to me the other day when I journaled. I realized I hadn’t hit this, I didn’t make that. And I am still thinking about that thing, what happened to me? I looked at what I had achieved and I didn’t hit the idea; of what I wanted and I ended up squarely, solidly in the gap. I was ungrateful, frustrated, and disappointed. 

Does anyone want to live there? No, we don’t want to live there. What is the solution to getting out of the gap? The solution is to look at what you’ve achieved and to go backwards to where you started and you look at what you have achieved. Guess what happens there? You end up living solidly in the gains. 

Living in the gains is joy, gratitude, satisfaction, and fulfillment. Not only do you get all of that when you live in the gains because you look at where you started and you look at what you achieved… since you’re a high achiever, know that I love you. I see you, BUT if all you ever do is go after the ideal and you are not taking the time to look backwards at where you started and celebrate.

Here’s a big word for you, instead of going after more and more… Progress. Progress equals happiness. And so when you go on your normal route, I want you to measure backwards. A and B is what Dan Solomon talks about in the book. And instead of needing to hit the ideal, this beautiful word “Want.” I don’t need it, I want to achieve more. I want to have greater influence, I want to create more revenue. I don’t need more influence, I want to have more of it. I don’t need it to validate who I am  or to prove my worth. BUT because I am living in the gains, my heart of joy, gratitude, and fulfillment. And I’ve got the biggest gain of all knowing who I am and that I am loved just the way I am. That is massive progress. 

Start with the question: what if you didn’t achieve your goals? Guess what? 99% of the people that set big goals that stretched them, that made a difference in the world, that pushed them… 99% of those people didn’t hit their goals. But do you know what us high achievers are really good at doing? Because if we don’t hit the mark, we begin to die on the inside. Stop it. YOU MADE PROGRESS! 

So instead of saying, I didn’t hit the ideal, find the pieces of progress that you can celebrate. I did this in my journal the other day. I was thinking, Well, I didn’t do this and I didn’t do that and I didn’t make it where I wanted to. But then I also went back and I looked at the significant, big rocks that moved forward in my life over this last year, whether it was personal or business. There were some significant things that happened in my life. 

In 2022, I made a pretty significant shift in my career and vocation because I had been a pastor for 25 years. I am no longer employed at my church. I now serve as an elder. I love my church, but this shift needed to happen and now I am a full-time entrepreneur. And that transition didn’t just take 30 days, this took months and months to do it well. I wanted to bring honor, serve well, and continue to serve like I am to this day. This transition took a lot. 

There were other things. We hosted two events this last year and changed people’s lives in deep and lasting ways. Two events we created out of nothing. We also launched our transformation community. If you are not in it yet, you should totally join by the end of the year. The transformation community has calls every week and we have hours of valuable content we have built up over the last year. We’ve got a thriving community, masterminds and we have shifted our entire structure of what we are doing. And the last huge thing we did, we implemented EOS, the Entrepreneurial Operating System. If you have not read the book Traction, you should do that. 

I can’t believe I was over here literally beating myself up BUT then when I look at where we started and what we’ve achieved in 2022, that’s massive progress. When you lay a strong foundation, you make progress.  

And I know, you all are awesome. It is not in you to be stagnant, complacent, and mediocre. You wouldn’t be reading this blog if you weren’t into making progress. 

I want you to go back and find your gains. If you journal, what a gift. Journaling is such an amazing habit to have. Maybe you don’t journal, you can go back through your photos and remember the memories you have created this last year. You could also go back through your calendar month by month, week by week and spark a memory. Those are three simple ways you can go back and find the gains and celebrate them. Soak in them. 

The question I started with was, what if you didn’t accomplish all your goals. Well, before you go setting goals for 2023, go back to where you started at the beginning of 2022 and squeeze all the goodness, power, joy, and energy out of looking at the gains that you’ve created. Celebrate that progress. 

From that place, don’t set goals that are an ideal that you’re never going to hit. You don’t need to prove anything in 2023. You’re not going to get squat done if you’re doing stuff to prove, validate, or to find your worth. Achievement is not where you find that. When you go back and you get gratitude, the gains… Think about what you want to do in 2023. How do you want to impact lives? How do you want to make a difference? What memories do you want to create with your family? But don’t do it because you have to or because you need to, do it because you want to. Create goals for the coming year from that place. 

Maybe you can look at what are the big rocks that you want to move forward and then continue to celebrate and squeeze all the goodness out of 2022. When you get into that beautiful place of gratitude, joy and fulfillment, you can really start to dream and envision what you really want for the next year.  I believe in you. You are amazing. You have made massive progress in 2022. If not one else has told you, I am proud of you. It takes commitment, hard work, intentionality, dedication to make the kind of progress that you did. 

And some of you might not have tangible, external factors that are demonstrating your progress, some of you have made progress on the inside of you. Some of you, it has been hanging on through hard, difficult circumstances, loss… I don’t know, but I know you are not who you were AND you are making progress. So celebrate the gains. 

Live in the gains and you’ll do more in the coming year than you ever dreamt possible. Go out there and celebrate your gains. This is where you need to go out there and give your greatness to the world because somebody needs what is on the inside of you. Go out there and give it away!