What to Do When you Are Falling Behind With your Goals

Lately, I’ve challenged myself: I posted on my Facebook Fanpage that I would start posting five (yes, five – I know, ambitious goal) blog posts per day here at Living For Mondays.com. I haven’t written about it here on the blog because I was afraid to fail while I officially announced it. So I posted it more or less in secret on Facebook, hoping that not too many people would pick on me if I fail.

But as it is with many goals, if you don’t set the conditions and say it loud you most probably won’t hold yourself accountable. As I said I’m an ambitious person for things worth fighting for (at least for me) and I definitely do what I can to reach my goal if I set it. But at the same time, when I fail I don’t have to say it loud.

Good strategy, right?

Nobody else knows that I fail – it’s just me. Actually that is also the problem. If it is just you who holds yourself accountable you much easier will break your goal. And so did I. Finally, after two weeks of posting five blog posts per day from Monday to Friday I felt tired. Then I had a meeting outside the house, had to help my husband with something, had to do stuff for my University class and simply felt that I wouldn’t reach this ambitious goal. I debated with myself: Do I just give up and don’t talk about it anymore?

Is my goal gone when I break it now?

Well, you don’t have to give up your entire diet when you just ate a pice of chocolate, right? Even if it feels like this the first moment you can catch up quickly and just don’t eat any further chocolate. You could also go for a walk and make up for it. You can go swimming or play badminton. Everything is fine as long as you still stick to your goal. That is what came to my mind finally. I don’t need to give up just catch up. And so did I. I was three posts behind but since I also want to publish high quality content I had to put in the time to write and write and – yeah you guess it – write.

Today is Monday evening, 10 pm nearly. I’m there. I made up for last week and I’m not really at the point where I want to be. STILL with my goal. You can check it in my archives if I sticked to my challenge.

I don’t tell you this to make you believe I’m a great person who never fails. Actually, the difference is the case. I want to encourage you not to give up because you couldn’t meet your goal for one day. After all, we can make it better tomorrow.

Let me know what you think in the comments.

How do you handle these backlashes?  Unfortunately, success also means to get over these obstacles.

So what do you do when you are falling behind? What will I do next time when I do?

Work hard and catch up – no matter if it is blogging, school, regular work or a simple diet.

Filed in: Blog • Blogging Tips
Tagged with: failure • success