Having goals is important, but hitting them is not the be all and end all. If your goal is to lose 15 pounds in 3 months, but you “only” lose 14 pounds in that timeframe, did you fail? If you think about it from a black or white (yes or no) perspective, then, yes. You didn’t lose the 15 pounds. But that’s not how you should view it. You lost 14 pounds! You made changes to your lifestyle, overcame obstacles, and you’re healthier because of it.
Don’t get dejected when you don’t hit an arbitrary number. Did you give your best effort? If not, how can you improve your efforts to reach or surpass your next goal? Just because you didn’t reach one milestone doesn’t mean that you should give up.
Do not make too much of the results. Yes, you should look at the results – but that’s only so you can reverse engineer how you obtained those results. Understand how the results came to be and why they are what they are. What efforts and actions did you take to get to the final outcome?Work on improving processes to obtain better results. Are there actions that are repetitive in your daily tasks that you can automate, delegate, or eliminate so they don’t take up your valuable time or brain power? What can you do differently for the next goal? Was there a critical decision that should have been handled in another way or were there many small, subtle changes that you should have made? Focus on the processes, efforts, and actions you took leading to the results, but do not overemphasize the results themselves.
One last note…We should always be seeking to make progress, not perfection. If progress is the goal, succeeding is realistic and motivating. But if perfection is the goal, ultimate success will be unattainable. Nobody is perfect and achieving a goal doesn’t change that fact.