How to Get Goals Back on Track

How do you get your goals BACK on track?

What do you do when you realize you’ve lost focus—or are just not making progress on your goals?

Here we offer some solid advice for getting those goals back on track!

(Full transcript is below the video link.)

Full Transcript of video

Hello, I’m Josh Duncan with SCBTV News bringing you this edition of Financial Freedom. The purpose of Financial Freedom is to provide tips to help you achieve financial freedom for personal significance.

Welcome to the fifth and final episode in our series about goals and how they can help you achieve personal significance. Last time we discussed tracking your goals. Today we are going to discuss getting back on track with your goals after you have lost focus.

Here is the situation, you have put in the time to develop your vision and goals. You implemented a daily tracking system. You asked a trusted friend to hold you accountable. Then, without warning, you realize you are working to put out the multiple fires around you and stopped working toward your goals.

How did your goals get off track?

What happened? How is this possible? Don’t beat yourself up. You lost focus. It’s happens to all of us. You are normal. This reminds me of going grocery shopping with my three children. I walk in with a list but seem to always leave without purchasing everything on the list. This is because I’m more focused on my children behaving than I am on shopping.

How will you respond?

The next question here is how are you going to respond? How you respond determines whether you will be successful in achieving your goals or not.

As you come to the realization that you have lost focus on your goals, you must take the time to admit this truth to yourself. This doesn’t mean beating yourself up. Don’t internalize your failure until it starts to ferment into regret. The failure event is over; now it’s time to move on.

Reflect . . . but do not ruminate

Accept the failure and identify where and when you lost focus. Think about steps you can implement to better avoid that situation in the future. You may even want to write down the improvements you plan to put in place. It’s almost guaranteed you will be faced with a similar situation in the future.

This is a challenging place to be as your mind will begin leading you down a dangerous path of negative thinking. It will be easy to believe you cannot accomplish your stated goals and that giving up would be easier. We have all been here. Don’t believe those lies.

Consider this quote from Jim Rohn, “We must all suffer from one of two pains: the pain of discipline or the pain of regret. The difference is discipline weighs ounces while regret weighs tons.” Now is the time for discipline.

Validate your determination to get your goals back on track

Once you have decided to keep moving forward, review your goals and validate your determination to achieve these goals. I remember a time leading a project where myself and the team lost focus of our goal. At the time, I was not excited to pull the project back on track. In hindsight, I’m glad we did as our work was a benefit to the organization.

Recommit with your accountability partner and move forward

Effectively what you have done is turned around and refocused on your goals. Now is a good time to recommit to your daily goal review and check-in with the person who agreed to help hold you accountable. They will likely encourage you to continue working toward your goals. Keep pushing forward through this roadblock. It’s only temporary.

Financial freedom and personal significance

This series on goals applies to your financial freedom and personal significance because this is where the path to your success begins. Understanding where you want to go defines what makes you feel significant. Once you know this, you can begin working to reach your goal.

Thank you for joining me for Financial Freedom. I'm Josh Duncan with F5 Financial Planning, helping you achieve financial freedom for personal significance. Please click here to send topics you would like me to cover. See you next time.

Most recent video blog post:Recent video blog posts in this series:

• 5 Reasons to Set Goals
• 3 Steps to Accomplish Any Goal
• 5 Keys for Making Goals SMART
• 2 Tips for Successful Goal Tracking