Staying committed to your goals is undoubtedly a struggle that no one is immune to. Keeping goals that you set with yourself and yourself alone can be difficult for a variety of different reasons. Whether it’s losing weight, paying off your debt, or getting a promotion at work, goals of any size can be challenging to maintain. However, in this article, we’ll discuss how to stay committed to your goals. And we will also cover some reasons why you might be having a hard time doing so and what to do about it.
Why is it Important to Stay Committed to Your Goals?
There are a variety of reasons why it’s crucial to stay committed to your goals. At the most basic level, you’ll achieve your goal if you stay committed to it. However, many people might not think that when you fail at your goals, it affects your self-esteem and self-image at different points in your life.
You Can Increase Your Self-Esteem
Staying committed to your goals can actually do wonders for increasing your self-esteem and self-image. If you never follow through on commitments you make to yourself, you might eventually start feeling bad about yourself. If you consistently let yourself down, you may feel like you aren’t worthy of achieving your goals. This becomes a vicious cycle.
When you keep those commitments to yourself, you reinforce the idea that you are worthy and that you are making time for yourself consistently. When you increase your self-esteem, the rest of your goals will become completely unstoppable. Focusing on your goals and avoiding distractions can improve your self-worth and give you more confidence.
You’ll Gain Momentum
As we just mentioned, keeping commitments to yourself will help you feel utterly unstoppable in all aspects of life. When you stay committed to something in one area, other areas tend to improve significantly. For example, if you are trying to lose weight and commit to going to the gym, you might also notice that once you stick to this commitment, your eating patterns improve, and you start getting better sleep. Once you get that ball of momentum rolling, it is practically impossible to prevent it from affecting all areas of life!
You’ll Reach Your Goals!
Simply put, You will actually achieve your goals if you stick to them and stay consistent. Staying consistent is genuinely the only way to reach your goals, whether you are setting short or long-term goals. If you set a goal for yourself, you will certainly want to surpass it; if you don’t, you may create unhealthy patterns and expectations for yourself. If you stay consistent and keep your commitments, you will reach your goals faster and more efficiently.
I Keep Commitments to Others! So Why Can’t I Keep Them to Myself?
A lot of people find they have no problem keeping the commitments they make to others. So if you can keep the commitments you make to your friends or family, why can’t you do this for myself too?
This is often because other people’s needs take priority over your own. And it’s not necessarily the best outlook to have. It’s great to care about others, but you won’t stay motivated if you don’t care about yourself too. And you may continue to feel obligated to keep the commitments that you make to other people over yourself.
Your goals might also feel less important than the goals of others, depending on their needs at any particular time. However, this is something you should try to overcome. This next section will discuss why you can keep the promises you make to others but not yourself.
You May Not Prioritize Yourself
For starters, it’s highly likely you are not actually prioritizing yourself. This is especially true for women, who often put themselves last on their list of priorities. Friends, partners, children, and even bosses typically come first! But, the fact is, you won’t be able to pour out of an empty cup. If you are already entirely exasperated by the time you get around to your own goals, you won’t be able to commit to them or contribute to them at all. You would sooner break promises to yourself over promises to others, so your goals take a backseat.
You Require More Accountability
Keeping goals with yourself and yourself only is difficult, especially when you don’t have anyone to answer to. Keeping your own goals requires holding yourself accountable, which many people find challenging to do. It’s easy to break a promise you made to yourself when you didn’t tell anyone about it, and no one’s checking in on you. It’s difficult to admit, but having no accountability could be a reason why your goals aren’t reached.
How Do I Stay Committed to My Goals?
Now that we’ve discussed why staying committed to goals is so complicated and why you might have difficulty keeping the goals you set with yourself, we can talk about how to stay committed to your goals. There are a few main tips that might help you reach your goals efficiently. And all of them have to do with staying consistent, prioritizing yourself, and holding yourself accountable.
Ask Yourself Why You’re Making the Goal in the First Place
To increase the chances that you actually reach your goals, you need to understand why you are making these goals in the first place. For example, if you have set a goal with yourself that you are going to save a certain amount of money, you need to know the specific reasons. Why have you decided on this particular amount of money? Is it an arbitrary number, or does it serve a specific purpose (emergency fund, going on a trip, making a big purchase)? If you have more solid reasons in mind for setting your goals, you will be more likely to stay consistent and meet them.
Have A Concrete Plan
If you make a goal but don’t have any concrete plans for reaching it, that’s basically just a dream. It will continue to be a dream until you have actual steps for achieving that goal. If we’re staying with the money example, you’ll need to decide how long you have to save that money and when you’ll have it. How much money will you save a week or a month? What will you do if you miss one of those weeks or months? Having a plan is critical to setting and keeping your savings goals.
Believe in Yourself
This might seem silly, but it’s actually incredibly important to believe in yourself if you want to achieve your goals. Limiting your beliefs about yourself and what you can accomplish will get in the way of achieving your goals. Sometimes, the most limiting factor to achieving a goal isn’t the size of the goal or the timeframe. It’s you! Believing that you can achieve the goal you’ve set for yourself isn’t only the first step. It’s also the most critical step.
Have Check-in Dates
As we just discussed, having a concrete plan for achieving the goal is just as important as the goal itself. However, treating your goals like appointments you have to check in with is another excellent way to ensure the goal is achieved. Place check-in dates on your calendar to make sure that you are staying up-to-date with your goals rather than just hoping they will eventually happen.
