029 | What to Do When You Struggle to Reach Your Goals

Do you struggle to reach the goals you set? Maybe you start off great, but then fall off a few weeks or months in. If that’s you, you want to hear this.

In this episode, we’ll talk about a really simple concept to help you turn things around and actually reach your goals.

Lightly edited transcript appears after the show notes.

Topics Discussed

• why many of us struggle to reach our goals
• a simple concept to turn things around
• why the simple concept works

Listen to the Episode

Resources mentioned

Lifestyle Freedom Starter Guide: https://www.rhothomas.com/start

Wealthyesque, Episode 2: https://www.rhothomas.com/one-thing-keeping-you-stuck/

Wealthyesque, Episode 25: https://www.rhothomas.com/fastest-way-to-pay-off-those-law-school-loans/

Atomic Habits by James Clear

Work with me

Interested in coaching with me? Click here and let’s set up a call to see if coaching would be right for you.

Connect with me

The Wealthyesque Community: https://www.rhothomas.com/community

Social media: @iamrhothomas on Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn

Email: hello@rhothomas.com

Recent Episodes

Lightly Edited Transcript

Hey friend. Welcome back to Wealthyesque, and happy Friday!

How’s it going? I hope you had an amazing week.

We are about a week into the new year, and, you know, this time of year most people are setting New Year’s resolutions, and all of that and so I want to talk a little bit about making or setting new goals.

So the past couple episodes, we talked about deciding what we want our lives to look like for this year. And for many of us, that means changing old habits and setting new goals and things like that.

When we are setting new goals or trying to establish a new habit, a lot of times we’ll do well for a little while, but then we’ll fall off right?

Like you’re going to the gym, but one day you just don’t feel like getting out of bed. Or you’re trying to stick to a budget and then you overspend and give up.

So if you struggle to follow through with your goals, I’m going to introduce you to a really simple concept that will help you turn it around, and it’s so simple, it might seem kind of silly, but we’re going to talk about why it actually works.

So let’s jump in.

When setting goals many of us try to go from zero to Beyonce overnight, and I’m not gonna lie that’s been me before, for sure.

But if you hardly ever work out, and then decide, well, new year, new me, and I’m going to work out every day.

Or if you realize that you’ve been living paycheck to paycheck and spending all your money and now decide you’re going to do a complete 180 and cut out all this stuff from your budget and save hundreds of dollars each month.

Or maybe you haven’t been making time for yourself at all. And now all of a sudden you decide you’re going to do this elaborate morning routine with all these steps and all the things.

And it’s not to say you can’t do these things, there are people who you know completely change overnight, but it’s highly unlikely. That’s not the typical case. And it’s because you’re not accounting for where you are now.

So if you never work out and then think all of a sudden you’re going to be the person who works out every single day it’s probably not gonna happen. You might do it for a little while but then it feels too hard, and you give up.

You don’t keep track of your money at all and then think overnight you’re going to become the Super Saver. It usually doesn’t work that way. The goal is too far from where you are now, and you probably don’t truly believe it when you decide to do it in the first place.

And then a week in, your brain starts offering up thoughts like “I’m just not a saver. Money is too complicated. I can’t do it.” And then that leads you to feeling discouraged, and then ultimately not getting the results you want.

When you struggle to follow through with your goals. It’s probably that you set them too high. And the trick is you have to start where you are.

So no you can’t go from zero to Beyonce overnight. She’s been working for 30 plus years to be where she is, but instead you start with a smaller goal, that feels like a no brainer. Something that you can easily commit to, and then you build up to the Beyonce-level goal.

So instead of going all out and trying to do this intense workout routine every single day, maybe instead you commit to working out one particular day each week. Or you commit to working out for five minutes every day, or even just a really easy workout related task.

I heard this interview with James Clear, he wrote Atomic Habits, and he talked about how you have to establish a habit and then you can improve it.

So he gave the example of someone trying to create the habit of working out regularly. And he said, first, the person would just commit to putting on their workout clothes at the same time every day.

And then once they’ve established that habit, they move to putting on the workout clothes and getting in the car.

And then putting on the workout clothes, getting in the car, driving to the gym.

And then they get to actually doing a push up when they get to the gym, and it just keeps building like that until eventually they’ve established that ultimate habit that they want it to create.

And yes, it might take longer to get there doing it that way, but once you build up to that level it’s actually going to stick.

I’ll give you an example of this from my own life. It was unintentional, but the same concept.

So if you’ve been following me for a while you know that every morning I spend time reading my Bible and journaling and praying, but I didn’t start out that way. I used to pretty much only read the Bible at church.

And so, when the Bible app was created, it made it really accessible, and I would do the daily devotional which was all of you know 5, maybe 10 minutes, so very low commitment.

And I did those daily devotionals first thing in the morning for years. I think the Bible app was created like 10 years ago.

So, I was already in the habit of engaging with the Bible a little bit every morning. And when I decided that I wanted to go deeper with it. I just had to improve that existing habit so it made it a lot easier.

Another example also unintentional, but my husband and I are on this journey to pay off over $670,000 of debt, and I posted on social media this week about our progress over the last four years. We’ve made a lot of progress, but when we first started, we were paying something like $150 a month extra on our loans.

And keep in mind, we were coming from having no budget and just paying the minimum on our debts and not really paying attention to our money. So, that $150 extra payment was pretty good for us at first to kind of get our feet wet, but a few months in we saw that it wasn’t making a dent in our debt because I mean $150 on $670,000 is not even touching interest, right?

And so we took some steps to pay more towards the debt each month, and we’ve increased the extra payment amount over the years, but it all started with that $150.

The reason this works is when you start where you are and you follow through with what you say you’re going to do, and you start seeing wins then you build up trust in yourself and your ability to achieve the goal.

You don’t have to stop at that goal you set. Like if you made a goal to save $100 a month, there’s nothing to say you can’t decide one month to save $200, but every time you follow through, that’s evidence in support of you achieving your new goal.

And that’s part of why the debt snowball method is so effective. We talked about that back in Episode 25 so head back to listen if you want to learn more about that method. That’s the method I recommend for tackling your debt.

But when you set the really lofty goals, and you regularly miss them, then you let yourself down and you lose confidence in yourself and your ability to do what you say you’re going to do.

When you are going for that super huge goal you might already be thinking that you can’t do it. And so when you don’t hit the goal, your brain is looking at that as evidence to support that thought that you can’t do it, and we talked back in Episode 2 about cognitive bias, and that’s the brain’s tendency to hold on to or look for evidence to support your beliefs, and it will ignore evidence to the contrary.

All that to say, you have to start where you are. As you keep consistently showing up for yourself and getting those wins, you’re building trust in yourself, and you’re building the evidence that you can do it. And then from there, you can step it up and you’ll be much more likely to follow through with your ultimate goal.

And then one last tip. Just make sure you’re being honest with yourself about where you are and what’s doable for you. And that goes both ways, so it doesn’t serve you, to set a goal to save $100 when you know you could easily save $1,000, just like it doesn’t serve you to set a goal to save $500, when you know $200 is more reasonable.

Again, start where you are. And if you need help getting on track with your money goals, I’m a coach and I can help you. So head to rhothomas.com/coaching. Let’s set up a call. Let’s chat about what you’re struggling with and how coaching can help.

Okay, so let’s recap:

1. Trying to go from zero to Beyonce overnight is setting yourself up for failure because you’re not accounting for where you are now.

2. When you go for a goal that’s too big and don’t reach it, your brain sees that as evidence in support of the thought that you can’t do it.

3. You have to start where you are. Set a goal that you can easily commit to.

4. When you start seeing wins, you build trust in yourself and your ability to achieve your goals. From that place you can work your way up to the bigger goal.

5. Be honest with yourself about where you are. Don’t set an unnecessarily low goal or an unnecessarily high goal.

Okay, that’s it for this week.

Don’t forget to join me over in our private Facebook community, The Wealthyesque Community, and let’s chat about this concept of starting where you are. Do you think that it’ll help you with following through with your goals? You can head to rhothomas.com/community to find us.

If you got value from today’s episode, just think of one friend who would also benefit and share it with them.

And if you share on social media or if you just want to connect, I’m @iamrhothomas. That’s my handle on Instagram, and you can also find me on a few other platforms, but I’m most active on Instagram.

If you haven’t done so already, please leave a review for the show. Those reviews help the show get found by more people. It’s just super helpful, and I read every one and love seeing what you’re getting out of the show.

Okay friend as we close out, I pray that as you’re setting your goals for yourself, you will think about where you are now and set goals that will help you build trust in yourself.

I pray that you will continue building trust in yourself and your abilities until you reach your Beyonce-level dreams.

And as always, I pray that you will continue to take steps to regain control of your time, build wealth, and live the life of freedom and choice you deserve.

Talk to you later.