1. Guilt. Let’s face it – goals take time. Whenever you spend time on one thing, it takes time away from other things. It’s quite easy to let the guilt we feel over not keeping the house immaculately clean or serving fast food for dinner again take over and cause us to quit. Don’t get me wrong—the desire we have to provide for and spend time with our family is valid and should be recognized. But we also need to remember why we set goals in the first place. Many times the objectives we have are important to us because of how the outcome will benefit our family and friends as well as us. Through an improved financial situation, quality changes to you lifestyle, or even just an improved and happy mindset, the rewards you receive from achieving your goals will filter down to affect the ones most important to you in a positive way as well. Don’t let your guilt rob them of such a valuable gift.
   
   
2. Time. Especially for busy moms, time is our enemy when it comes to fulfilling our objectives. It’s easy to allow a goal to wait until there’s “more time” to really focus on it. Sadly, as we look back we all too late realize that there never will be more time. We simply have to make do with the time we have. Sure, it may take longer than it does for someone with less responsibility than we have. But that’s no excuse to not do what we can now, when our passion to achieve our goal is so strong.
   
   
3. Sabotage. Sadly, all too often we sabotage our own efforts to reach our objectives by setting goals that are not realistic on a continuing basis. Suppose you wanted to lose ten pounds before your class reunion in six months. You decide that in order to do so, you will need to exercise at least three times a week before work. That is a realistic goal that you believe you can keep. The first week, you are successful and exercise the targeted three times. However, during the second week you are able to exercise five times. Rather than congratulate yourself for your extra effort during week two, you decide your original goal of three times a week was too constraining, and you set a new goal to exercise five times a week. During the third week, however, your baby has a cold and keeps you awake at night. As a result you have trouble getting up to exercise. You are only able to exercise three times that week. Through your fatigue and disappointment that you couldn’t meet the weekly goal of five, you decide it is too hard and quit altogether. Don’t do this to yourself! Set realistic, achievable goals that can get you over the finish line. You may not finish first- but quitting over unrealistic goals only assures you won’t finish at all.
   
   
4. Your Goals aren’t Liquid. It is equally difficult to achieve a goal when you are not willing to adjust it as your life changes. Things change—people get sick, children need you, work responsibilities ebb and flow. If you are not willing to change your goals to adjust to your changing world, you are only setting yourself up for disappointment. Be willing to amend your goals to allow for change – lengthen the time to accomplish a goal, provide for a new plan that requires less or more of your commitment, or readjust the steps you take to arrive at your goal. Keep your goals liquid, but don’t use change as your reason to give up on them altogether.
   
   
5. What vs. Why. We are all guilty of setting What goals rather than Why goals. A statement such as:“I want to receive my Masters Degree in Education in two years,” (a “What Goal”) is a worthwhile goal, but we have much less ownership over such a goal that we do over one that describes why, such as “I want to achieve my Masters Degree in Education in order to learn more about the educational resources available to me so that I can provide better education to my students. This will help them to grow and achieve higher levels of success, and watching them succeed makes me proud to be a teacher.” Both the What and the Why goals are valid goals, but the more personal Why goal give an individual more passion and desire to achieve it. Make sure your goals clearly describe the payoff you want to achieve by reaching them. The payoffs are the stimulus to keep you striving to achieve even when things are falling apart around you.
   
   
6. Thinking it vs. Inking it. Any book, article or seminar you attend that discusses goals or goal setting will tell you to write your goals down. Thinking about them just isn’t enough. But the thought of writing down goals scares a lot of people. It took me many years to start actually writing my goals down. I think I was afraid that my dreams were too grandiose, and writing them down would only solidify the fact that they were ludicrous. I finally came to realize, however, that the act of writing my goals served as a contract between me and myself. Everyone knows how hard it is to back down from a signed contract! Do you still find it difficult to put pen to paper? It’s not necessary to sit down and journal every hope and dream you have. Instead, try first with the easiest form or written goals there could be. Start a “to do” list. As each task gets completed, check it off and congratulate yourself. You have just achieved another written goal! These simple successes will convince you that the same achievement can occur with your bigger hopes and dreams. Pick up a pen and a paper, and there’s no limit to what you can achieve!
   
   
7. Alphabet Soup. One of the big brick walls with goals that I always encounter is trying to accomplish all my goals at the same time. I’ll work on one goal for a day or two, then before that is finished move on to another goal and work on that a little bit. Eventually, I am juggling 4 or five different goals, doing none of them well, and feeling like the guy who spinning the plates on top of the big sticks in the circus. I never finish anything because all I can do is run up to a plate, give it a spin, and move on to the next one before it falls. The solution to this dilemma is to prioritize your goals. The easiest way is to make a list of the goals you want to accomplish today, this month, or this year. Then, go back and rank them: “”s are the goals that are critical, “B”’s are important goals, but not critical, and “C” goals would be nice, but are not necessary. Once they are ranked, always work on your “A” goals first. Never work on a “B” goal until your “A” goals are well in hand. “” goals are reserved for those luxury times when your most important goals are under control. By focusing on this plan, you’ll always be focusing on the goals that are most important to you, while leaving room for the “extras” at the same time.
   
   
8. Everyone’s a Critic. No matter what you try to accomplish in life, you will encounter a critic trying to convince you it’s not worth it. Sometimes, the critic means well, but they are afraid your goal is too risky or you’ll be hurt. At other times, they are merely acting out of jealousy or ignorance. Either way it hurts. It’s easy to believe a critic because much of what they say is true and speaks to your own fears. While research and other people’s opinions are important parts of the goal setting process, you must be aware of the critic, and take what they say with a grain of salt. Ask yourself what the critic’s motivation lies. Are they speaking with wisdom from experience? Or are they merely vocalizing their own fears?
   
   
9. the Failure Factor. Speaking of fears, one of the big reasons we never achieve our goals is that we are afraid that if we try we might fail. So, in order to shield ourselves from that disappointment, we never try at all. Fear of failure is hard to combat, but I’ve found that the best way to overcome it is to set such a high standard for failure that you will never fail. For instance, tell yourself that if you were able to learn anything from the situation, you didn’t fail.
   
   
10. What Goal? Probably the biggest reason why we fail to reach a goal is that we fail to make a goal in the first place. In order to be successful, you must choose to be successful. It is a conscious decision, and one we are not always willing to make. It is easy to forget, however, that even by not making a decision we have made a choice to do nothing. And that choice can lead us to a dead end faster than any roadblock that may come our way. Cosmetic mogul Mary Kay Ash counsels: “Give yourself something to work toward – constantly.” I’d add, make sure you’re working toward your chosen destination. After all, as Yogi Berra so aptly reminds us “If you don’t know where you are going, you might wind up someplace else.

Sue Dickinson is the author of What’s a Mom to Do? Overcoming the Urge to Put Your Life on Hold and the creator of www.UnlimitedMom.com, designed to celebrate the many facets of Mom. Because when you recognize them all, your possibilities are unlimited! Contact Sue at Sue@UnlimitedMom.com or visit http://www.UnlimitedMom.com