How to Achieve your Goals and Lose the Guilt of ‘Failure’

Work on your mindset before working on your goals.

You have your eyes set on something and a certain amount of time to accomplish it. This could be anything — an upcoming exam, a fitness milestone, inculcating a good habit in you, or maybe losing a bad one.

Now, how does one usually proceed here on? You make a plan — a schedule that seems to guarantee success and try to stick to it.

Try. You can only hope that you’ll be able to follow the very ambitious plan you’ve made till the very end and achieve your ultimate goal. But, unless you have the right mindset to begin with, it doesn’t work that way, does it?

Here’s what really happens. When you first start working on a goal, there’s a certain newness to it, an initial thrill. You start out slow, face some minor obstacles, and overcome them. You accomplish milestones and get appreciation. The journey seems to be filled with success and your effort seems worth it. It motivates you to keep moving forward.

But then, this golden phase starts to fade away and it starts getting real. The schedule now seems monotonous. You start facing obstacles that you can’t seem to overcome. The appreciation is now nowhere to be found. You feel like a failure.

‘I can’t do this. Its too hard, too much. Why did I ever start? It’s just not worth it’

And as these thoughts echo in your mind, you feel like quitting, and start to slack off. This is the point where you need something within you that drives you even in the face of setbacks. You can’t always count on the external sources of motivation to fuel your determination.

You need to be self-motivated. And to be self-motivated, you need to prepare yourself mentally and understand your purpose towards your goal.

Why is it so important to you? Why do you want it?

Find the answers to these questions, consolidate your thoughts, and ignite a passion for it. Make completely sure that you’re working for it not just because you have to, but because you want to and it means something to you.

Reinstate the belief that no matter what, quitting just isn’t going to be an option. That there’s no going back. And that in the end, it’ll be worth it.

Talking about success, let us also talk about the other side of the coin — the F-word. When you dream of accomplishing something, there are only two ways it can go. Either success or what we apparently call ‘failure’.

It’s easy to feel discouraged when you don’t get what you want. You might feel like you lost and that you weren’t good enough. But most of the time, this completely irrational sense of failure is because of the guilt of not doing everything you could, while you could.

To save yourself the guilt-trip, give it your all while you’re actually working on it. Leave no stones unturned, be disciplined, and be positive. Believe that you can do it and make yourself do it. Treat your goal like a very part of you. But, make sure to completely lose this attitude once it is over.

Instill such a mindset within you, that even if it doesn’t work out at that stage, you don’t feel like you lost something. Come out of the journey giving your hundred percent, knowing that as long as you learn something you cannot lose.

Work for what you want with such dedication, that at the end, without any regrets, you can confidently say,

‘I did everything I could and everything I should’ve. If I still couldn’t get it, then it surely wasn’t meant to be. And maybe for some greater purpose, I wasn’t meant to have it.’

Be attached to a goal only while you’re working for it, not when the results come. With this motivated spirit and resolute mind, you can never truly lose at life.

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