1. Feeling frustrated or dissatisfied with the way things are (weight, career, relationships, etc)
2. Deciding on a solution that will satisfy the problem (lose weight, change careers, work on being a better friend, husband, etc)
3. Create a plan that will produce the results you are seeking
4. Take the steps necessary to implement the plan
5. Assess your results

If everything works the way you planned, you’re now losing weight, getting better grades, performing better on the job or otherwise achieving whatever goal you initially intended.

But what if you experience the more likely result, that things don’t go the way you intended on your first try?

Step 6 in the process (not shown above), and the one that generally eludes most people, is this:

Figure out why you didn’t get the result you wanted.

In any endeavor, whether it’s Thomas Edison trying to invent the lightbulb, finding your significant other, or trying to lose 20 lbs, there are likely to be setbacks.

What most people tend to do, at least initially, is see that they’ve failed to reach their personal goal and stop there. We don’t like the feeling of failure and disappointment, and after one, two or at most three setbacks virtually 90% of us will say ‘that’s enough’ and stop. Wrong!

The CORRECT approach is to move into “why didn’t this work?” mode. What went wrong, what’s holding me back from achieving the outcome I wanted?

Did I lack sufficient motivation to even get started? Did I start thinking it won’t really work? Did I not make action on a daily basis to start moving toward the goal, because I didn’t make time in my day for the essential activities? Maybe you did everything you said you should but it just didn’t work, i.e. the plan needs to be revised. Until you come up with a satisfactory answer, you should be asking “why did I not get the results I wanted?”.

Unless you’re trying to suspend the laws of gravity and float in mid air, there’s probably a solution to your problem. The right way to handle coming up short in the pursuit of any personal goal is to examine what you did (that’s why we track our progress), and figure out what’s holding you back.
 
How do you think this should be solved? I’ll give you my answer to that question in my next post.