4 Steps To Take When You Don't Meet a Goal

This is episode 41 of Author Audience.

Welcome to the Author Audience show, the podcast that helps you reach more people with your message, create a book, connect with your audience, change lives. Here's your host, Shelly Hitz.

Welcome to Author Audience, where I'm on a mission to help you reach more people with your message and it's time to let your light shine. Today I'm rolling out the red carpet and inviting you to join me as I share about four steps you can take when you don't reach a goal. I originally recorded this on Facebook Live and to be honest, I didn't know how I was going to use the recording. I thought maybe I would have it transcribed or put on my blog or my YouTube channel. But I actually got some comments asking me for this particular episode to be transcribed and they just said how helpful it was that I thought it would be really good to have this as an episode on my podcast and share it with you. And so I hope that you enjoy this episode and that you are able to be encouraged no matter where you're at in your process of meeting your goals. I have a question for you. Have you ever felt discouraged or disappointed that you have not met a goal? Hi, my name is Shelly Hitz. I'm an author, coach and business strategist and I'm the creator of authoraudienceacademy.com I've written over 40 best selling books. But today I want to talk to you about when you what to do when you don't meet a goal. And I was working with some of my inner circle members today on business boost calls and one of them told me she was really discouraged because she didn't meet her goal. And so I thought, you know, this would be a great topic for a live broadcast. Have you ever felt that way? If so, tell me, type yes in the comments and let me know what you've done. What has helped you when you don't meet your goal? So I have four steps I want to share with you that I shared with my Inner Circle client today. The first step, if you don't meet your goal I recommend doing, is to re evaluate. Sometimes we try to bite off more than we can chew. Can anyone relate? Oh my goodness. I think I can do lot more than what I typically can do. And I think the reason is, you know, we just, we, we think, okay, I can just fill in all these spots and I can do all these things. But what ends up happening is it takes longer than we expect. Obstacles happen. Things, you know, we have to take care of things that we didn't expect and we just don't get done what we plan to get done. And what I find happens is when you set this goal and then you can't reach.

Really brings discouragement or disappointment or you start beating yourself up. And that's what was happening with my client today. She was like, I should have been able to reach that goal. I should have been able to do that. And so I told her, okay, stop, let's take a breath, let's re evaluate. And what I recommend is using the lead process. Lead is an acronym I've created to help you really just get more focus. And I've talked about it many times, but what I recommended her to do is to be able to. The L in lead is locating. Locating is like a brain storm or a brain dump. And I told her, just set the timer for 10 or 15 minutes and write everything you're doing right now, everything you're responsible for, every volunteer activity, everything you're responsible for at home, and be able to write all that down. And then.

You'Re reevaluating. What is it that I'm doing right now? What is it I'm responsible for? And is there anything the E in lead is eliminate? Is there anything that I can let go of? Is there anything I can eliminate? The A is automate and the D is delegate. But I really wanted her to just do a brain dump. So figure out what is it you're responsible for, what is it you are doing right now and write it all out and see is there anything that I can even let go of for a season so I can make progress on my book, so I can move forward on my goals. And maybe it's a volunteer activity that you say, you know, I've been doing this for years. I love it, I believe in it. But for these next three months, I'm just going to have to say no, not be involved in that for right now. Now, the other thing, the second step I said is pivot and shift. So once you reevaluate, once you really see where you're at, and if there's nothing you can let go, then there's nothing you can let go. But then if that's the case, many times I think we procrastinate or we don't meet our goals because we simply have too much on our plate. We simply have too much going on. Anyone relate? If so, just type an amen in the comments. I have been there. And so sometimes you just need to reevaluate your goals and so the pivot and shift step number two is, do you need to extend your goal? Do you need to change your expectations of what you can actually get done? And so that was really freeing for her to be able to say, oh, I can actually pivot, I can reevaluate, and I can change this goal because I actually have more going on than I realized. The third step is to really think about it. Instead of just big leaps, I think a lot of times we just think, I want to have this big leap. I want to do this big thing. I want you to think about inching forward, making progress every week. So what can you do this week to make progress instead of just feeling overwhelmed and then getting nothing done, what can you get done this week? So what I encouraged her to do and something you may want to do is look at your week and say, okay, I'm going to block off this chunk of time to be able to.

Make progress on my goals. So it may be an hour, it may be three hours, it may be a half an hour. I mean, I don't know what your schedule is right now. Guard that time. Just say, nothing is going to take this time so that you can at least have that chunk of time every week to be moving forward. So you can think of it like inching forward, inching forward, inching forward. Those consistent actions over time are going to lead to some of your greatest results. Amazing. So I encourage you to think about it. The step number three is thinking about inching forward every week and not just always the big leaps. I mean, the big leaps are important too. And then the fourth one I recommended for her, she's a Christian author. I recommended that she start a prayer team. I had a podcast recently on this topic that you can listen to on my website, shellyhits.com or author audience. You can find it on itunes, stitcher, or wherever you listen to podcasts all about setting up a small prayer team. Because when she really started to tell me what was going on, I realized this sounds like more than just having too much on your plate. Sounds like there's a spiritual battle going on here and the enemy was wanting her to feel regretful of the things she hasn't done. Just all of this mindset stuff, which if you're a Christian and you're a Christian author and you have a message that has an eternal impact, there's a really good possibility it could be a spiritual battle. I gave her those action steps to re evaluate. See what is she doing? Is there anything she can let go of? Then to step number two, pivot and shift, shift her expectations and shift the goal, the deadline of when that first draft will be done according to everything she has going on. The third one was to think about inching forward, making that consistent progress every single week, and the fourth one is to form a prayer team. If you're watching the replay, you can also comment, leave questions leave your advice what advice do you have for people when they're struggling with not meeting a goal? And share that in the comments below. I'll see you next time.

Thanks for listening to this episode of of the Author Audience Show. Connect with us online@authoraudience.com where you'll find all the resources mentioned in today's episode. While you're there, grab Shelley's free video training on how to write and publish your book using her Six Step Ascent method. Join us again next week to learn how to reach your audience with your message.