Why Your Goals Fail By February (And How to Fix It)

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These are practical, they're simple and if you follow them you will finally stick to your resolutions this year. The first key is to get crystal clear on your why. Most people are pretty vague. Clarity is the foundation of follow-through. Again, most people fail because they set goals without defining their why. And there's a big distinction of what you need to do here. They choose goals that sound good, goals that impress people, goals they think they should want because they see their friends doing these things and they say, I'm going to go do this because that's what I'm supposed to do or it's because what I think I'm supposed to do. But if a goal doesn't have meaning behind it for you, if it doesn't tap into your heart, your soul, for some reason you won't fight for it when life gets hard, when life is challenging. It's kind of like my business. There are ups and downs in business, but because I have a specific purpose, a specific why, which is to serve 100 million lives every single week to help them improve the quality of their life. When things are challenging, when the industry changes, when the content doesn't work, when I don't get a guest that I want to book, when something's not working out, I care more about my mission, the purpose, the why behind it because I love it, that I'm willing to do what it takes week after week, 13 years every single week. And I've been showing up every week for 13 years. I haven't missed a week on this show. And it's because I care about the why behind it and I keep transforming year after year. But again, if a goal doesn't have meaning behind it for you, you won't fight for it when life gets harder, when it gets challenging, when you're going through a stressful time in your life. And when I started this podcast, I didn't do it for numbers or recognition. I literally did it because I wanted to learn from great people and help others improve their life as well. And I was just like having so much fun. I wasn't trying to make money originally. I was just trying to figure out how can I get in front of the smartest people in the world, learn from them to help me and also share the wisdom to help others. And that purpose kept me showing up long before anyone knew the show existed. And this was a time when no one knew what a podcast was. You had to send people a link to iTunes and teach them a five step process just for clicking and listening to the show. It was so hard to give people to listen to a podcast 13 years ago. And I still did it because I loved it. There was something behind it. And I wasn't doing it for the money. I was doing it for the impact and the meaning of it. And that's what made me stick through it through all the years and why I'm still doing it today. You want to ask yourself three questions. Why does this goal matter to me? What will my life look like if I achieve it? And who will I become in the process when you connect your goal to your heart, not just your calendar, amazing things will start to unfold. And when you get clear on why you want this thing to happen, why you want to accomplish that goal, you will become someone greater just in the process of developing what you need to develop to accomplish it. And even if the goal doesn't happen, even if in six months or a year you don't accomplish the goal, you're going to be so much farther along than when you were when you started out. This is a big one. Again, step one is make sure you want to really connect your heart by getting crystal clear on your why. Step two is to set specific, simple and measurable targets. A goal that is not clear is impossible to hit. Get healthy, make more money, be more confident. Those aren't goals, those are wishes and wishes don't create change because successful people set targets that they can measure, they can track, they can improve on. And that's what you need to do starting out this year. And I need you to watch this and hear this stat right here. The simple act of writing down your goal, writing it down, getting it on paper, getting it on your laptop or whatever, that that alone increased your chances of success with that goal by 43%. Come on. Really? Yeah. Wow. It just somehow makes it so much more real. But I guess it's kind of like some people, if they just make a daily to-do list for themselves, they're more productive the next day. Yeah, writing down what you want to do tomorrow, you're more likely to go do those things tomorrow. Rather than just thinking about all the things in your mind, I have to do these 20 things tomorrow. Maybe you do one or two if you just think about it. Yeah. Supposed to getting it down and then saying step by step, here's what I'm going to do. Yeah. It looks interesting. So it's almost like making your goal list like you would your to-do list. You write it to-do list of the things you need to do today or tomorrow, and hopefully you can get through those things. But most of us don't write a goal list. Yeah. Where we're going to get through our goals or pursue our goals and then figure out what's the game plan and how do we get to accomplish this. Yeah. You are 43% more likely to accomplish your goals if you simply write them down. You can't just be thinking, I want more money, I want more this, I want more this. Like write down specifically what you want. It is going to force you to really start taking action. You're not putting something in your mind. You're putting it on paper. You're looking at it. This is a signal, a trigger to say, I want to create this thing. Now, manifesting it by putting it on a physical thing that I can look at. If you're just thinking it, it hasn't left you yet. It hasn't been in the world yet. You're just thinking it. Now you need to put it down, write it down. Look at it. You're connecting your thought with something you're looking at now of a goal that you want to accomplish. By doing that, it's going to force you to start saying, how could I make this happen? How can I go create this? How can I manifest this? How can I bring this to my life? Writing it down is a huge step. If you've never done it before, I highly recommend it. And when I wrote my first book, I didn't just wait for inspiration. I wasn't just like, I want to write a book and I'm going to do it when I feel ready for it. No, I made a daily word count target. I gave myself a deadline. I had small measurable actions that added up to a finished book over months. By doing it on a daily basis, here's what I will do every day, the action steps. I could measure that every day. I could reflect on it. I could edit it. I could change it. But I was thinking of thought. I want to write a book. Then I said, okay, I want to write a book by this date and I want to get this many sales and I want it to be a best seller and I want this, this, this. The clearer I got by writing it down and giving myself measurables on a daily basis, then I just had to follow through and take the actions. By taking the actions, I built confidence and it wasn't perfect. But I was creating something now rather than just thinking about the resolution that I had. Your goals should be so clear that you can track progress week by week, day by day, and set yourself up for success because the year is going to fly by. It's going to be like, boom, 1 in 27 is going to be here. If you don't create these goals in this process, it's going to be the end of the year and you're just saying, I wish I wrote my book. I wish I got in the shape that I wanted to get in. I wish I got into the relationship. I wish, I wish, I wish. And now another year flies by, another year flies by until you do and implement this strategy. At AJ Bell, we believe investing is for everyone, even people who know nothing about investing. Like Keith, who thought dividends were a boy band. Jessica, who thought compound interest was a prison dating app. And Sue, Sue thought FTSE 100 was a bit of under the table fun, which surprised her accountant. If we can make investing feel good for them, it's no wonder which have recommended us seven years running. AJ Bell, feel good investing. The value of your investments can go up or down. So a challenge for you is to try this. Instead of getting healthy, and that's my goal, is to just get healthy. Say that you will work out for four days a week or five days a week or three days a week or whatever it is for you. Write it down and then just do it. Write it down and do it. Don't think about it forever. Write it down what you want. Think about why you want it, the purpose that's not superficial, that's actually meaningful for you. Then write it down and follow through. You just do it every single day. That's all you got to do. Show up and do it every day. Instead of saying, I want to make more money, say I want to increase my income by 20%, in six months. Then start doing it. Start figuring out how you can become the person to increase your income by asking questions, finding a mentor, learning, developing new skills, setting new goals, whatever it might be around your financial abundance. Instead of saying, I want to build confidence. Instead, do one challenging task every day. Freight a boundary. Have a courageous conversation with someone. Go ask a stranger for money. Whatever it might be that feels like it would scare you. You'd be so embarrassed or humiliated doing. That's the thing you need to do every single day. Whatever you're afraid of, do that thing every day. If you're single, go ask someone out every day. If you're broke, ask someone for money every day. The thing that scares you, that's what you need to do every single day. Instead of just saying, I want to build confidence, create a game plan to build confidence around the thing you're most afraid of. This will help you build confidence. Simplicity creates consistency. You want to keep it as simple as possible by thinking about what you want, the meaning behind why you want it, writing down, and then taking action on a consistent basis. End of step two is to set specific, simple, measurable targets. You might be thinking, Louis, I've heard this stuff before. Yeah, you've heard this stuff before, but have you implemented it consistently in your life before? No. And you might be saying, Louis, this is pretty basic stuff right now. You're just talking about a couple of things like set a goal, write it down. Oh, I've heard all this stuff before. Yeah, but you haven't done it. Or maybe you did in the past, but you forgot to do it now. So you're not creating the breakthroughs you want in your life because the biggest breakthroughs often come from following the simple, foundational principles. But sometimes we forget. Sometimes we get off track and that's okay. That's why I'm here to remind you how to get back to track for your life. Step three is to break your goal into microactions. I was speaking about this briefly for a moment, and this has been key for all of the goals that I've accomplished in my life. And I have been a goal accomplishing machine since I was younger playing sports and learned about this process. Big goals are inspiring until they become overwhelming. And the moment overwhelm hits you, you will stop. So the real secret is to break the goal into microactions, small steps that you can execute daily or weekly with ease. And then when you start tracking back one week, like, wow, look at all these things. I did all these things in a week. Amazing. I did all these things in a month. Amazing. You're going to have so much progress in your life just by breaking these things down into these daily actions. When I was learning about public speaking, I didn't start on big stages. I remember thinking that I wanted to be crazy if one day I spoke in front of 500 people, 5,000 people, 50,000 people. What if I was speaking in front of arenas? Wouldn't that be incredible? But I was living in reality at that moment where I was broke, sleeping on my sister's couch for a year and a half in my early to mid-20s. Not sure about who I was. I had no confidence. I had no money, no skill set, and no purpose. And I knew that I was afraid to speak in public. That was a big fear of mine growing up. If you've ever been afraid of public speaking or speaking in front of a group of people, then you know how that feels. Leave a comment below if you have. And for me, I was just like, I'm sick and tired of feeling scared about speaking in front of a group because I couldn't speak in front of five people without stuttering and stumbling and feeling insecure and worried what people would think about me and feeling stupid and not enough. All those fears crippled me and didn't allow me to speak in front of people. I'd have to spend a month preparing to give a two-minute speech in school because I was so afraid of what people would think about me. And then I just would dream like, man, wouldn't it be amazing to speak in front of big stages? But I don't know how to do this. And what I did is I started with small groups and daily practice. I would go to a weekly Toastmasters meeting and I would force myself to get up every single week and speak for at least two minutes. And I was with a small group. I had accountability. And then I would practice daily, daily little practices of how I was going to give my next speech the next week. And that over one year, I did it every week or a year. And I tell you, I was a completely different person by the end of the year. I was unrecognizable the first time I got up and gave a speech at my Toastmasters class. I had a cast on because I was wearing a cast from a surgery I had playing football. I had a cut off sleeveless shirt because my shirt didn't fit over the cast. I had my hand raised up like this because that was the position where the cast was in. And I was looking at a podium, reading word for word my speech. And I didn't look up one time because I was so nervous to look people in the eyes when I was talking to them. That was my first speech. And the feedback at the end, they have to be nice. I was in a friendly environment. This wasn't like at some corporate business meeting where they're going to laugh at you or whatever. This is a friendly environment of Toastmasters where they want you to improve as a speaker. And at the end of this, everyone has, there's a few people that have to give feedback. And they have to give encouraging feedback. They have to say, we acknowledge you for getting up there, Lewis. We acknowledge you for standing up there and giving the speech. There really wasn't anything good they could say, but you have to find something. We acknowledge you for having the courage to be here today. It was just like anything they could do. There was nothing good about the speech they could acknowledge me on, but just the fact that I was there, that's what they talked about. And then the feedback on how it could improve was, next time, just look up once and look around the room and take a pause. Just try to have some vocal variety and don't just be monotone the whole time. So they're giving me feedback. And I did this every single week for the entire year. And by the end of the year, I went from standing on a podium, reading, looking down word for word, to the very end of the year, no notes written down, no podium in front of the audience, fully present, fully connected, fully giving my heart, giving my best for a speech with a standing ovation. I was unrecognizable. And it didn't happen overnight. It took having a clear vision and the reason why I wanted to be a great speaker, because I wanted to be able to impact and inspire people around the world with my message. I wanted to help people. I wanted to serve people. I wanted to feel more confident in my life. And I wanted to make money with that in the future. I wanted to find a way how I could communicate better to impact people and make a living doing that in the future. And it transformed my life going all in on this fear to make it a goal to accomplish something in one year. And this is something that you can do as well with whatever goal that you have. Each micro action built a little more confidence inside of me. And that confidence created incredible momentum. And I'm still riding that momentum of those early weeks of setting a goal around learning how to speak more confidently and getting my first paid speech within that year. That goal, that challenge set me up to where I'm at today. I would not be where I'm at with the School of Greatness, with the New York Times best-selling books, with the audience that I have. I would not be here without taking action on this strategy that I'm talking about here on how to create and accomplish goals. And this is the year that you can do this. But you have to be willing to have courage. You have to be willing to humiliate yourself, to embarrass yourself, to feel silly, stupid, goofy, whatever it might be that you're afraid of, you have to be willing to feel it. And when you do, it's not going to be that scary. You're going to embarrass yourself. And then you're going to realize, oh, I'm still alive. I'm still here. Like, everything works. Okay, maybe I look silly, but I learned something. And I can improve on this now. So a challenge for you is to ask yourself, what is the smallest step that you can take this week that moves you forward? What is that step? Progress is not built on motivation. Progress is built on momentum. And that is the end of step three, break your goals into micro actions. JP Morgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation driven finance. That's JP Morgan Payments. Step number four, build accountability into your goal. Without accountability, you create excuses. And excuses are why most goals fail by February. I want to share a powerful moment with Mr. B sitting right here talking about how he would not be where he is in his business without a mastermind and accountability early in his YouTube business. When you love something deeply and you devote your life towards it and no one else around you does, you feel like a freak. You feel like an outcast and you, you know, it causes a lot of self-doubt that's not really needed. And, you know, and your parents telling you your waste of time, everyone's telling you your waste of time, and it makes it, you know, very tempting to just quit and do other stuff, but nothing makes you as fulfilled with that. And like, it's just your environment. Like, because the second I got around, I ended up bumping into like these three other guys online that had similar subscriber counts as me when I was 18, 19. And I mean, that was, that was it. Like I went from people literally asking me if I was mute because I talk so little and like them saying, shut up, all you do is talk about YouTube and what's wrong with you and be realistic, blah, blah, blah, to, we literally had a mastermind call every day for a thousand days in a row. That's cool. Yeah. I told this story in Joe Rogan. People don't believe me. I get tons of messages like, you didn't do that. But yeah, we, I met these other guys and for once in my life, like I could talk to them. We've no joke, like had a Skype call for 18 hours. And I went from like not being able to hold a five minute conversation with a human to being able to talk with guys for 18 hours straight about, you know, studying retention charts and studying why certain videos did well and looking at, Hey, these are the 50 best performing videos last week. What did well about them? Why do people click videos? And we could, the only bottleneck was sleep. Like if it wasn't for sleep, we would probably talk for a thousand hours straight, you know what I mean? And so, and we did that every single day for a thousand days in a row. You know, we didn't drink, we didn't do drugs. We didn't talk to women sometimes not by our own choice, but we didn't talk to you. Maybe it was women didn't talk to us. But yeah, and we were just like locked in every single day and we all had around 10,000 subscribers. But then we all hit a million subscribers within the same month. So it's like the shows the power of like helping each other. I love what Mr. Beast talks right there and accountability creates consistency. When you know someone else is checking in on you, you show up differently. You show up more powerfully, more committed. I just had my trainer working out with me this morning. He comes to my place. I know he's going to be there at a specific time. And I also pay him to be there at a specific time. So that forces me to wake up at a specific time and follow through on my goals that I have for my health goals. And I show up whenever he's there. And that is the key. It's not about if he wasn't there, it just be, it would give me an out. It wasn't mean I don't want it. It doesn't mean I wouldn't be motivated to do it. But you know, stuff happens, life happens. I've got twins, I'm up late, I'm taking care of them. I'm with my wife. I'm traveling all a busy lifestyle. And if my trainer's not there, maybe one morning I'd be like, I just really need to sleep right now because I'm exhausted. But because he's there, because I pay him, you pay attention to what you pay for even more. So when you have accountability and you have a payment tied to it, you're even more likely to show up. And when you show up consistently, you create progress. When you create progress, you create momentum. And that creates confidence. And it helps you accomplish your goals. This is the key. And early in my business, I had a friend who did weekly check-ins with me as well. And we shared our goals and our deadlines. And we were just talking about, here's what I want to create. Here's what I want to do it by. And then I'd say, okay, what do you need? And he would say, what do you need? And we talk about these things and we try to find ways to help each other. That simple accountability system helped me grow faster than any motivational speech ever would. It was just about the accountability system in place. And I'm not saying you have to hire a coach or find a friend or whatever it could be, whatever system works for you, but you need accountability. Accountability can be a friend, a coach, community, a group, whatever it is, a public commitment, you can be posting something online or a tracking system, some type of app, whatever it is that works for you. The key is this, make your goals visible to your life. Make your progress measurable. And when you create accountability, you create results because results come by you showing up consistently for your goals. Step four, is to build accountability into your goal. And step five, this is a big one. It's reward the progress, not perfection. Most people quit because they expect perfection. Then they miss one day. They fall behind a little bit. Then they've accepted that they've failed at being perfect. And successful people do not celebrate perfection, they celebrate progress. They stack on their wins, boom, boom, boom. They build confidence. They reward the behavior, not just the outcome. And this is the key. It's the identity of who you become along the way, which is the greatest reward. It's not the goal or the accomplishment that you achieve. It's how you've transformed inside and out the energy you bring to life because you've showed up for yourself every day. And when you honor your word and you just say, I'm going to do this thing every single week consistently, you're going to see results. Whether you accomplish the big goal or not is kind of irrelevant because you become a different human being by showing up differently every day and your identity shifts into a more calm, positive, empowered person as well. JP Morgan Payments helps you drive efficiency with automated payments and intelligent algorithms across 200 countries and territories. That's automation driven finance. That's JP Morgan Payments. JP Morgan Internal Data 2024, Copyright 2025, JP Morgan Chase and Company, All Rights Reserved, JP Morgan Chase Bank, and a member, FDIC. Deposits held in non-US branches are not FDIC insured. Non-deposite products are not FDIC insured. This is not a legal commitment for credit or services. Availability varies. Eligibility determined by JP Morgan Chase. Visit JPMorgan.com slash payments disclosure for details. You know, every major goal that I've achieved came from celebrating small wins as well. It's like, okay, I just did the workout this morning. It's a big high five to my trainer. We did it. We did it together. Thank you. It's a celebration of a small win throughout all the days and all the weeks and all the years. It's like, how do we stack these little wins celebrating the workout, one chapter written, one page written, 10 pages, whatever it is of that micro goal that you're trying to accomplish, one connection, one step forward, one opportunity, closer. Celebrate that. Be excited about it. It doesn't mean you have to take the day off and like eat a birthday cake every day to celebrate your micro wins, but it's like, you can give a high five. You can give like, yeah, I got it. You can do whatever it is. Just celebrate it in that moment. You build a great year by stacking great days, not by chasing a single perfect moment of accomplishment at the end of the year. That's not what this is about. I need you. I need you to listen to me. I need you to reward yourself for showing up. By showing up, you are going to get closer to accomplishing the goal. And you don't need to feel worthy only by accomplishing some big goal by the end of the year, only by finally losing the 20 pounds, only by actually writing the book and finishing it. You are worthy by showing up and creating progress. That's a big win because most people in the world don't create progress. They stay stuck in their mind. They stay trapped in fear and anxiety and self doubt and insecurity. And that's not you. You're here because you're about to take the actions necessary. You're about to be starting in this moment. And by taking the action, you get to reward the behavior that moves you forward because progress is the energy that keeps you going. I need you to know that. And the end of step five is make sure you reward the progress in your life, not perfection. And a lot of women struggle with this. You work so hard. And if it's not perfect, you beat yourself up. You feel bad. You feel like guilty that you didn't do it perfectly. Or you missed one little thing or whatever you're working on. And ladies, I'm telling you, relax. Take it easy on yourself. You're working so hard. Allow yourself the grace and celebrate the progress, not the perfection. You don't have to be perfect. I'm letting you know you're good enough. You're lovable. Where you're at right now, things don't have to be perfect. Just celebrate the progress. Celebrate that you're not where you were a year or two ago, that you've improved. It doesn't have to be perfect. You're never going to be perfect. This is goes for everyone, but we're never going to be perfect. But we can set standards. We can set behaviors we want to live up to. We can create commitments. We can set an identity that we want to step into as well. And we can do our best to live to that consistently. And that is incredible. Celebrate that. That's the reward, not the accomplishment, not the goal. It's who you're becoming along the way. And if you want to make this the year that you actually follow through, then I need you to remember these five steps. One, get clear on your why. Why is this meaningful to me? It's got to be clear. It's got to be meaningful. Step two, make your goals specific and measurable. Again, you've probably heard this a million times, but the foundations work for a reason. They're fundamental in you accomplishing your success. And if you don't have the fundamentals, you won't be able to accomplish what you want. Number three, break them into micro actions. This is daily, weekly, monthly actions and goal timelines. Not by the end of the year. I'm going to accomplish this one thing. And then there's nothing in between. Daily goals, daily accomplishments, weekly, monthly, break it down because the life is much more fun when you celebrate every day by just showing up. And this doesn't mean you have to spend 10 hours a day until you kind of reward yourself. Like what is the one action a day that's going to get you closer? Number four, build accountability. The greatest athletes in the world that I've sat across from after they win their championship, after the world champs, the national champs, the best in the world, the MVPs, they don't say to themselves, you know what, all these coaches that got me here were great. Now that I'm here, I don't need another coach. No. They know to have a greatness mindset, that they need even greater accountability, more coaches, more systems to keep them at the level they want to be at. They don't get rid of coaches. They hire better ones. They invest in more of them to sport on other areas of their life. Accountability is the key. You need it. Don't shy away from allowing people to hold you accountable. And step five, celebrate the progress, not the perfection. You don't need to be perfect. Just focus on taking a step every day to get you farther along than when you once were. Again, you don't need more motivation. You need a system that works. And if you follow these steps consistently, you will create a year filled with momentum, filled with purpose and personal growth. If you are ready, if you are committed to making 2026 your best year ever, then comment below, yes, I am ready. And if you want more strategies, frameworks, and exercises to help you truly make this the best year you've ever made, then make sure you get the greatness mindset book right now. This is the book that I wish I had. This is the book after two decades from sports world to business world to everything I've created on how to really structure your day by day to creating an outlining and goal setting along with creating the inner world that you need to manifest what you want with all of your goals on the outer world. Get this book, The Greatest Mindset. It's all about unlocking the power of your mind to live your best life today. And again, you are going to go through challenges this year. There's going to be some adversity. There's going to be some changes and you're going to need to be flexible. But when you follow the game plan, when you implement these strategies that I talk about in this episode, also in the greatness mindset book, you are going to have a framework that holds you accountable and supports you along the way. I want this to be the best year you've ever had. I want you to look at the end of this year and come back and comment on this episode in this video and say, I followed through on what I said I was going to do from this episode and I created the results that I wanted by the end of 2026. That's what I want for you. And I believe that you can create it as long as you follow through on a daily basis with these five action steps. My name is Lewis Howes. I'm so grateful that you're here in this moment right now. And I want to remind you if no one's told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy and you matter. And now it's time to go out there and do something great.