By Judy Churchill

Why you may not be achieving your goals...

It is usually around the beginning of March that most people realise that their well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions are either just not going to happen, seemed doomed to failure or are at best falling well short of their expectations. So, what can you do about it?

The first thing you can do is give yourself the 3 ‘F’s test. This is a system I invented several years ago and I use it to help my clients reach their goals. It involves the following:

1: FOCUS: Are you totally focused on whatever it is you are trying to achieve? Are you living and breathing this goal during every waking moment? This may seem obsessive but those who actually achieve what they set out to accomplish are those who are obsessive about what they do. For example, if your aim is fat loss then apart from changing your diet accordingly, you should be integrating fat loss not just into a specific exercise plan but into every opportunity you have during your waking and sleeping moments – swapping motorised transport for walking, earlier bedtimes and early rising, reduction of stress etc. etc. Your goal needs to become a way of life not just some hopeful dream. Setting goals often creates a destination that may never be reached, especially if they are unrealistic. FOCUS creates a pathway and a road map with a clear direction to follow and will keep you moving forward.

2: FIRE: How fired up are you about your goal? How important really is it? How much time, effort and enthusiasm are you investing to make it happen? If you are trying to make a new business or project work – how much does your livelihood or income depend upon it? If the answer is 100% then you will do everything in your power to reach your goal. If you have someone else supporting you financially or you don’t depend on this goal for your livelihood, then the chances are it will never materialise because your level of need is too low and consequently your energy is matching your level of need. Fire is also passion and if you are totally passionate about what you are doing, you will naturally achieve positive outcomes.

3: FUN: How much are you actually enjoying the process or the journey? If whatever it is you are trying to achieve is causing more anguish than relish, you will find yourself constantly resisting any opportunities to move forward and will be looking for excuses to do other things. The journey must be at least exciting as the end result – otherwise why would you bother in the first place? Looking forward to the day when………. won’t do it for you. Everyday needs to inspire you and give you some kind of high however modest. That doesn’t mean you won’t have ups and downs (a normal part of life), it just means that you will enjoy overcoming the challenges that spring up along the bumpy very imperfect road to success. In fact, you should enjoy and celebrate all the mini successes along the way. Whatever you really enjoy you will want to do more of and you will seek out opportunities to keep repeating that enjoyment.

Most people think that going from start to finish is one straight line but that’s only true if you’re running a 100m sprint. Most of us have to deal with the bends, hurdles, the steep hills, potholes, and other obstacles along the way.

You may even decide to rethink your goal and press the reset button and that’s OK too. Often an initial aim morphs into something slightly or completely different. Often the ‘universe’ has other plans for us and so if in spite of practising the 3 Fs we still don’t achieve our original goal, it’s probably because the ‘universe’ has other plans for us that we will only understand in retrospect.

Perhaps the single most important piece of advice when trying to achieve anything is - don’t try and go it ALONE. Having support in the form of a partner(s), a coach, trainer, mentor will not only give you motivation and sustainability, it will give you help and direction and encouragement while keeping you focused and remind you to constantly be assessing your ‘success’ with the 3 Fs test.

Finally as a famous man once said ‘if you are going through hell, keep going’ and the same man also said ‘never, never, never give up!’

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Judy is based in Monaco and specialises in transformational coaching working with both individuals and companies. 

Judy is also a qualified language teacher/trainer for adults and children in French, English and Spanish.

If you would like to receive coaching, communication skills training, language tutoring or certified translating from Judy, you can contact her on:judy.churchill@eloquencelanguagesandtranslations.com or judy.churchill@orange.fr via Facebook messenger and www.judychurchill.com