Why We Fail in Achieving Goals or to Execute Our Plans

If you're in a hurry, we'll get to the point quickly. Learn to delegate if you want to limit your losses and succeed more often.

Delegate is a powerful 8-letter word.

Delegation can get so much accomplished because there are multiple hands on deck. It multiplies your efforts. Even so, it flies in the face of what your parents told you. They said, "If you want something done right, do it yourself."

In many cases, they were right. You're more invested in your well-being and the results you create than probably anybody else. So if you have something important to do, it's often a good idea to tackle the job alone.

But what happens if you don't have the skills you need? If you're ill-prepared to accomplish something, it doesn't matter how good your intentions are. You can work and work and work your fingers to the bone. Put in long hours. Have a laser focus on what you need to do. None of those things matter if it's logistically or physically impossible for you to create the outcome you're looking for.

This Is Where Delegation Can Help.

Learn to delegate. You get other people involved. Assign tasks and then frequently follow up to make sure everyone is working in the same direction.

This means you have to learn to trust people. Knowledge of the skill sets of other people is important. You have to be a good communicator.

Once you put those skills in place, you have the ability to delegate successfully. That's important if you want to limit your losses and succeed more frequently than you are right now.

The biggest achievements are going to usually require the biggest effort. They're going to have a lot of steps along the way that need to be completed. You can do this yourself if you have the ability. But why not speed up your path to success and improve the likelihood that you'll succeed rather than fail?

Get people to help. You can repay the favor by helping them achieve the important things they desire in their lives. Before you delegate tasks, talk with your team. Tell them your goal. Ask them if they have any advice that might help.

There's a reason why the most successful organizations in the world have brainstorming sessions. They understand that a room full of smart people trading ideas gives them the best chance to succeed. They also understand the power of delegation. Learn to delegate effectively, and you can fail less and succeed more.

Do you ever forget where you put your car keys? This is a common failure of memory. Eventually you find them, and you're on your way. You get unexpectedly busy and fail to do the dishes or the laundry. No big deal. You can handle those tasks tomorrow.

These are inconsequential failures. They don't have as much influence in the grand scheme of things. Then there are those failures which can cause a lot of stress and strife in your life.

You have a big presentation to make at work. If everything goes right, it can help you land your dream job. You've put in a lot of work and effort. You're absolutely certain that it's going to be a success. Then you realize only minutes before the presentation that you've forgotten some important paperwork at home.

That's the kind of failure you want to avoid. Sometimes it's caused because you have difficulty establishing and upholding boundaries.

Start Saying No to Others and Yes to Yourself.

Scott Belsky is a successful entrepreneur and author. In 2010 he was listed as one of Fast Company's "100 Most Creative People in Business". Here's what he has to say about prioritizing yourself over other people.

"It's only by saying no that you can concentrate on the things that really matter."

You might be one of those wonderful people who always helps your friends. That's admirable. We would never advise you to act out of character, especially if you're giving assistance to your friends and loved ones.

All we're saying is that you might need to start prioritizing your own desires before those of others, if you aren't achieving the things that are important to you.

The clock is always ticking. We don't know how much time we're going to have. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Unforeseen problems pop out of nowhere. Those are reasons enough to take a look at how frequently you make people other than yourself your first priority.

It's good to help others, but any time you do anything, there is an opportunity cost. If you're working on "A," that means you can't be working on "B." Any time spent on one task means you miss the opportunity to accomplish another task.

By the way, this doesn't just apply to people. Sometimes you have to say no to one of your responsibilities or desires, in order to achieve another. Start setting boundaries and reinforcing them. Learn to say no more often. This could be the only thing you need to do to start experiencing fewer failures and enjoying more successes.

Think about a successful person you admire. This could be someone you know personally. It’s that self-made millionaire who started his own business, or your aunt who overcame lots of hardship to create an amazing life.

Or maybe you're in awe of some famous success like Oprah Winfrey, Steve Jobs or Stephen Hawking. Those people reached an incredible level of success even though they all encountered situations which virtually guaranteed failure.

There's one thing those people have in common. And by the way, their field of endeavor doesn't matter. Whatever successful people you encounter, they inevitably share one very important character trait.

They believe they are capable of anything.

They have an incredibly high belief in their abilities. They know that if they don't have the skills and abilities they need to right now, they can get them. If they need help, they go out and seek it. They are persistent, they persevere, and they don't let failures define them.

More than anything, they don't underestimate what's possible.

Successful People View "Never Been Done" As "Not Yet!"

Go back to your childhood. Do you remember trying to learn how to ride a bike? You never had ridden a bike in your life. Did that mean you couldn't ride a bike? Of course not. You saw other people riding bikes and that gave you the belief that you could do it as well. After trial and error (and more than a few scratches and bruises), you could ride a bicycle with your eyes closed.

Use that same approach to your current goals. Look around you. Have other people achieved what you're trying to do? That's proof positive that it's possible for you.

Even if you look for examples of success and don't find them, that doesn't mean you can't be the first to do something. All that's required for more successes and fewer failures in your life is often a rock-solid belief in yourself.

This doesn't guarantee success. You still have to act intelligently. You may have to assemble a team to help you, or develop new skills and abilities.

Before you do any of those things, you have to believe you're truly capable of anything. Then if you stumble and fail, remind yourself that perfection doesn't exist in the human condition.

Pick yourself up, brush yourself off, and move forward. Persistence is required to accomplish big things, but so is a healthy belief that you can achieve anything you want.

Do you use a shotgun approach to accomplish important things? That might be why you're failing to achieve big goals. Failing to focus on a single point and a clear, specific target might contribute to a lack of success.

Maybe you're familiar with a shotgun. It's a specific type of gun that fires multiple pellets at the same time. It's not like a rifle, which shoots a single bullet. As soon as the pellets leave the shotgun, they spread out. This means your aim doesn't have to be perfect. You can hit a target if you aren't focused on the exact spot you're trying to hit.

This isn't true with a rifle. You have to be perfectly sighted on your target. You're only sending a single bullet through the air. This requires perfect focus.

Now think about a recent failure that really bothers you. This was something you desired a great deal. Maybe you had a lot of ideas on how to accomplish it but didn't know which one to tackle first. You bounced from one task or activity to another, jumping from one idea to the next.

That's a shotgun approach to getting something done. And more often than not, it's going to lead to failure.

FOCUS - Follow One Course Until Success.

Multitasking absolutely destroys productivity. It can drive you crazy as well. You're jumping all over the place, trying to do several things at once. This is the absolute opposite of being focused in your activities.

Think about one thing you want to accomplish. What's required? What are you going to have to do?

Write down the game plan that needs to be followed. Then, specifically choose one activity or action, and stick on it until it's completed. That's the recipe for success in so many endeavors.

You'll additionally benefit from less stress. Focus means there's less for your mind to worry about. A targeted and specific action is being taken, and you put everything else out of your mind. This requires that you don't let yourself get distracted.

These days, there are so many things that beg for our attention. If you let them distract you, a lack of focus can mean failure. Before you even know what's happening, you're off doing something else or pursuing a totally different goal.

To get more accomplished, to succeed more frequently, and fail unless often, get focused. Develop a very specific and singular target. Chase it down until you hit it! Then you can apply a focused approach to other goals in your life, but not until you hit your current target.

Most people understand that dietary issues can lead to poor health. This is true physically and mentally. Put bad things into your body, and you'll get bad results. What many people don't take the time to think about is the link between a poor diet and failure.

We're not just talking about a failure to lose weight or accomplishing some other physical feat. What we're referring to is the fact that your unhealthy eating habits might be fostering failure in other areas of your life.

If you eat lots of highly processed foods, overweight and obesity might come calling. This is the case with two out of three adults currently. That extra weight means you have less energy. You might find you're tired and fatigued much of the time. Poor nutrition also leads to mental fog, a lack of focus, and sedentary behaviors.

Those are all things that can influence whether you're going to succeed or fail at accomplishing any task or goal.

Maybe you do a good job of watching what you eat. You have the occasional reward meal every now and then, but for the most part, you eat lots of health-boosting fruits and vegetables. You eat very little processed food. Even so, you encounter failure more often than success when attempting to achieve something important.

The answer might be a lack of hydration.

A dehydrated body and mind can wreck your ability to act and think. Physical and mental abilities decline. About a gallon of water needs to pass through your body every day for you to be properly hydrated. When this doesn't happen, you're more likely to encounter failure than success when you tackle any task.

Simply put, the food and drink you put into your body can either fuel your failure, or send you to success.

The Nutritional Recipe That Fuels Success.

If the reason you fail is linked to your diet, that's good news. Changing your diet is simple. You can do it starting right now. There are certain things to eat and to avoid that most nutritionists agree will lead to a higher state of overall health and wellness.

Eat lots of leafy greens. At least half of your meals should be fresh fruits and vegetables. Eat them raw or minimally cooked whenever possible.

Enjoy healthy protein in your meals. This means grass-fed beef, wild-caught seafood, and pasture-raised, organic eggs. Drink lots of water and herbal teas. You can enjoy coffee, but limit your exposure to creamers and sugar. Cut back on the salt, fried foods, and highly processed foods.

Trade white flour for healthier whole grains like quinoa, whole oats, and barley. Start cooking your own meals. That's the only way you truly know what goes into your body.

This simple switch to a health-boosting diet can make you more capable physically and mentally. You'll enjoy more emotional balance due to healthy hormonal regulation.

You'll also discover that you're winning more and losing less, enjoying fewer failures and more successes in your important endeavors.

A comical essay written in 1955 can help you fail fewer times and enjoy more success. Cyril Northcote Parkinson wrote a humorous article for "The Economist." Parkinson took some jabs at the inefficiency and poor productivity of the British Civil Service, where he served for several years. Here's the principle based on the first sentence of that essay.

Parkinson's Law: "Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion."

You've probably seen this yourself. An employee is told he has a week to complete a task. Most people today have a lot to do. The employee in question is no different. He looks at everything he has on his plate, and decides to get started on this task in a couple of days. After all, he has an entire week to finish it.

Guess what inevitably happens? This task is completed at the last minute, or the deadline has to be extended. This is Parkinson's Law in full effect. This happens for a few reasons.

It's Easier Not to Do Something Than to Do It.

People love to procrastinate. We love putting things off, don't we? This is often the case if you have some annoying or bothersome task facing you. A lot of times though, the things we have to do aren't aggravating at all. They're often quite simple.

It's easy to do the laundry. You've done it before. It doesn't take a lot of time. You just throw the clothes in your washing machine, and it does the hard work. When that job is complete, your clothes dryer takes over. The task requires very little mental and physical energy.

Even though it's simple and easy to accomplish, it's a lot easier to not do the laundry.

Combine that truism with Parkinson's Law, and you start putting off until tomorrow things you should do today. Tomorrow is not promised to anyone. Even if you're fortunate enough to have lots of tomorrows, the more you procrastinate, the less you're going to get done. This mindset also leads to more failures where your important goals are concerned.

You get lazily addicted to a "tomorrow's fine" mindset. All of a sudden you have so many things to do that you have to totally avoid a few of them. This way of thinking leads to failure, because you're rushing around at the last minute, and might not have the resources or skills required to create the desired result.

Deadlines are good. They're definitely needed to accomplish important things in your life. Just make sure you don't fall in love with a deadline. Stop procrastinating. Stop putting things off. Why not accomplish something sooner rather than later? That gives you more free time to do other things that are important to you.

It happened again. You should have seen it coming, because it's such a common occurrence. You had something important you wanted to accomplish. It's been a dream of yours for a while. Everything was put in place, and you did a lot of hard work. It looked like you were finally going to create the reality you had only dared dream of until now.

Then right at the very doorstep of an incredible achievement, the world conspired against you ... again.

You don't spend any time imagining that you might have been part of the failure. After all, this happens all the time. It's almost comical how the universe always seems to defeat your best efforts. Problems and hurdles, and speed bumps show up regularly. You fall victim to things outside your control, and no matter how hard you work, you just can't achieve important things in your life.

You poor, poor victim.

Is this the way you think sometimes? Sure, there are times when the deck seems stacked against you. One thing after another happens, and you experience failure of some kind. That's just life. Learn any lessons you can and then start over.

What you don't need to do in that situation is consider yourself a victim.

The Victim Mindset Makes Excuses for Taking No Action.

A victim mentality can lead to complacency. After all, why should you try to do anything? The world's just going to defeat you like it has time and time again. You may as well just cuddle up inside your limiting "good enough" mindset, and stop trying to create an amazing reality.

Winners don't do this. Successful people see failures, hurdles, and roadblocks, as simple things to be overcome. If they fail 100 times, they have absolute belief that their 101st attempt is going to meet with success.

They understand that by and large, everything in their life is the result of their efforts. Something outside your control might slow down your journey to achieving some wonderful thing. That's going to happen. Only you are responsible for deciding if you're going to keep moving forward, or embrace failure and decide to quit.

Nobody can perfectly control everything that goes on around them. What you can control is how you respond to life. Playing the victim never helped anyone succeed. Fully embrace the idea that you create your own destiny. That's the mindset that can lead to big successes and fewer failures.

Live self-help seminars were huge in the 1980s and '90s. You attended some event where a skill or process was taught. People flocked to these experiences for lots of reasons. They got to meet their idols. A promise was always made that a specific outcome could be created. Seminar attendees enjoyed meeting other like-minded people.

Financial independence seminars were very popular. So were dietary and nutrition-based seminars. You could take a weekend or week-long courses to learn better bass fishing techniques, how to live off the grid, or how to play your favorite song on a guitar.

These live seminars are still out there. Thanks to the Internet though, they are no way near as popular as they once were. People can take live or recorded courses online to learn just about anything.

A lot of people have used live and online seminars and courses to create amazing realities. That's not the case with most attendees. The billions of dollars the weight loss industry generates year after year are proof that most people fail to realize important achievements. People failed because their motivation was external only.

Your Motivation to Succeed Needs to Come from within, Not an External Source.

There are several reasons why seminars, webinars, and self-improvement courses make so much money. One reason is motivation. The most successful events have high-energy speakers and coaches that are natural-born motivators.

They get people fired up. They talk about the possibility of success. Then examples are given of people that achieved their biggest goals. The organizers of the event create a high level of energy throughout the training, and there's someone always in your corner cheering you on and keeping your motivation high.

You truly believe you're finally going to create the reality you've desired for so long. Then something happens. If you attend a live event, you have to eventually go home. If you're taking an online course, you have to hit the stop button at some point.

This is when failure comes calling.

If you don't have the ability to motivate yourself, succeeding at anything important can be tough. There are going to be times when you won't have some form of external motivation pushing you on toward success. You're going to have to be your own motivation. If not, a significant stumbling block could convince you to give up and forget your dreams.

Write down the real reason you're trying to achieve some important goal. Be honest with yourself. Look at this powerful motivator frequently. Figure out some way that you can uniquely motivate yourself to keep moving in the direction of your dream. Without the ability to self-motivate, the inevitable failures that accompany any important endeavor may get the better of you.