Before cable and YouTube, ABC’s Wide World of Sports ran from 1961 to 1998. Each Sunday afternoon for 90 minutes, host Jim McKay would cover two to three non-mainstream sporting events. Over the years, Wide World of Sports covered rodeo, curling, jai-alai, firefighter's competitions, powerlifting, surfing, logger sports, demolition derby, slow pitch softball, barrel jumping, badminton, triathlon, and NASCAR (before 1980). Every show opened up with a montage of sporting events with dramatic music and McKay intoning, “Spanning the globe to bring you the constant variety of sport... the thrill of victory... and the agony of defeat...”

Why do people experience the agony of defeat? Why do people fail? It is a great question to examine right now because approximately 164 million American adults set a New Year’s resolution this year. Yet, according to research, only 8 percent of all people ever feel that they are successful in achieving it. And 42 percent give up on their resolution before February 1st. Since today is January 11, 2022, you might be struggling with keeping your New Years resolution. I know I have struggled to do “Dry January” this year (for those not familiar I am trying to not drink alcohol for the entire month of January.)

Gritty people don’t enjoy failing to meet a goal. Grit, of course, is the will to persevere and accomplish long range goals. But understanding the “agony of defeat” is important to understand as well so you can avoid those pitfalls as you make progress towards achieving your gritty goal.

5 Reasons People Fail to Reach Personal Goals

In general, there are five reasons people fail to accomplish their goals — due to time, effort, distractions, rewards, and fear. Each reason for failure is different, but there are ways to decrease your chance of failing

1. Time — many people underestimate the amount of time required to successfully complete their goal. For example, in 2021 I had a goal to ride 7,000 miles on my bicycle. I am proud to say I met the goal by doing 7,002 miles last year. But when I set the goal, I didn’t comprehend that it would take me 404 hours on the bike to complete. Doing the math, I spent 4.6% of the entire year on the bike! That is a huge time commitment.

   Action — when you create a goal, make sure that you include a date when you want it completed. In the case of my yearly biking goals my completion date is always December 31st. Also, make sure that you block time on your calendar to work on your goal. With cycling I try to block time in the morning to get the ride in. If I don’t get it done in the morning, it usually gets overcome by events.

2. Effort — many people underestimate the work required to successfully complete their goal. For example, when I decided to write my book, Grow Your Grit: Overcome Obstacles, Thrive, and Accomplish Your Goals I didn’t fully understand how much work it took. From November 2020 to July 2021, I spend almost every free moment working on some aspect of the book — cover design, researching, writing, editing, working with my editor, working with the indexer, getting the book formatted properly, working with Jera Publishing, promoting the book, and getting it up on Amazon. As with any big project, it turned into a herculean task.

   Action — make sure you put time on your calendar every day, even if it is only 15 minutes, to make progress towards your goal. You may have to decide what needs to be taken off the calendar to make room for the pursuit of your goal.

3. Distractions — there are so many distractions that get in the way of reaching our goals. From simple things like social media, watching television shows, and family commitments to bigger things like competing priorities, different goals, crisis, and opportunities that arise.

   Action — Once again, it goes back to doing better time management. During the time you put on the calendar to work on the goal, make sure there are no distractions. The phone is face down and the internet browser isn’t open. Also, make sure that you budget enough time to get the project done. I decided I wanted to publish my book on July 12, 2021. In retrospect, that date left little room for error. I couldn’t have made the deadline if a crisis had occurred. For the next book I am going to pad the time by 90 days to give myself a buffer.

4. Rewards — many people fail to break their goal into manageable parts and then fail to reward themselves for accomplishing part of their goal.

   Action — celebrate the wins. There are nine reasons to celebrate your wins that I covered in a recent blog post. But the most important, in this case, is when a success is celebrated, you are reminded that you have the ability to reach one specific goal. It helps to create the momentum of improving 1% every day. And it demonstrates to yourself that you can achieve milestones on the road to even greater goals. Celebrate your wins.

5. Fear — fear is a very real emotion that must be acknowledged and dealt with. For some, fear may manifest itself in numerous ways: a reluctance to try new things; self-sabotage such as procrastination, failure to follow-through, or anxiety; low self-confidence; or perfectionism, such as a willingness to try only those things that can be finished perfectly. Overcoming that fear is a big challenge and derails many people from accomplishing their goals.

   Action — to manage your fears and build courage, make a list of your fears that are associated with accomplishing your goal. Beside each fear, list the worst thing that can happen. Then, figure out one thing that you can do to mitigate this fear. For example, when I started my company, one of my fears was that it would attract any clients. To mitigate that fear, I decided that I would put 100% into TFCG for one year. If it wasn’t successful after a year I would try something else.

Polling Data

As part of this blog post, I conducted a poll on LinkedIn, asking people to respond with what typically derails their attempts to achieve personal goals. 37 people responded. Here are the results on what usually stopped their pursuit of their personal goals:

49% — Distractions

27% — Underestimating the effort needed

22% — Underestimated the time needed

3% — Rewards and Fear

If you are like most people, make sure you build in ways to make sure distractions don’t disrupt your pursuit of a personal goal. One way is to make it easy to do whatever you are trying to accomplish. If you are trying to establish a running routine, lay out your clothes and shoes every night. That way it is easy to get dressed to go run and you won’t get distracted with social media, that presentation you need to finish for work, or the latest on ESPN Sportscenter.

Conclusion

If you want more help with developing your grit, avoiding failure, and reaching your goals, buy the book Grow Your Grit on Amazon.

Go on the offense in 2022, understand the reasons for failure, and develop plans to avoid them as you accomplish your gritty goals.