No Substitute for Success

There is no substitute for your goals. The biggest problems I’ve seen come from a difference between goals and actions. If your actions match your goals, you are successful and everything is great. When your actions do not match your goals, you have a problem. Actually, you’ll likely have many problems.

Problems occur when you don’t do what supports what you want. It’s not complicated, yet it is difficult to stick with. For many, a goal is something that they may never reach. For others, a goal is almost a promise that something will get done.

For those that refuse to find substitutes for their goals, success is the result.
Why do some people have problems reaching goals while others are continually reaching goals? They seem to do it effortlessly. Why don’t we all do it that way? We don’t all reach goals because we don’t all set goals properly. Setting goals properly is a skill that I talk about a lot. As a skill or habit, goal setting can be improved over time and become much easier.

Easy is the key word. It is the word easy that gets us in trouble when we are trying to reach goals. As we move toward the goal, many opportunities present themselves. We have the option to keep going, try an alternative action or two (or ten) and we have to decide which one to go with. Often we take the easiest one. When we do that, we feel better because things are easy, but there is one major flaw here.

The flaw is not that it is easy. Success is not easy, but it doesn’t have to be as difficult as we make it out to be. The real flaw with taking the easy option is the fact that we don’t weigh the options for what results they will bring. We simply look at the difficulty and choose based on that alone. We accept a substitute for our goals. This works if your goal is to be the one that makes the smallest effort.

I don’t know too many people that have put in the least and gotten the most out of anything. The truth is, the more you put in, the more you get out. That doesn’t mean that everything has to be difficult just for the sake of being difficult. It means that you have to think about what you put in and make a deliberate effort to do so.

One of the aspects of our actions that gets overlooked the most happens to be the most important. That aspect is how it aligns with your goal. Before taking a step in any direction, the most important question to ask is “Is this leading me toward my goal?” The question of “Is this the easiest route” may have a place, but if it is the first question asked, you are likely to head off in the wrong direction. If it is the only question you ask, well, I hope your goal wasn’t that important to you.

If an action matches your goal, it is the right thing to do. For you, the best step you can take is the step that takes you toward your goal. If a step takes you away from your goal, you are spending time and effort working against yourself. This is ironic considering the steps were taken because they are easy. It’s a good thing they are easy, because you will be taking many of them just to get back to where you started.

That being said, I guess it is easier to stay true to yourself and your goals. It is easier to walk a straight line toward your goal without veering off the path. It is more difficult to wander away from your goal or try short cuts that take you the wrong way and cause you to start over again and again.

Since it is easier to take action toward your goals, it must be easier to be successful than it is to fail. It must be easier to only do things that are in line with your goals and therefore only lead you to move in the right direction.

Too often, I hear the same people that complain about how challenging it is to stay on track are the ones that are continually taking short cuts and trying new routes. They are looking for the easiest route and they are ending up back where they started…again and again.

So is it more difficult to be successful? I don’t think so. I still think it is easier to do what will lead you to your goals. I think it is easier to look back and know that you did what you said you would do. I think it is easier to look ahead and know that you plan to do what you say you will do.

It all comes back to your own credibility. I’m not just talking about how you can commit to appointments or tasks. It is even simpler than that. It is more about committing to your goals. That’s all it takes. When you set a goal, take actions that will help you reach them. Does that sound more difficult than trying all sorts of things that lead you in the wrong direction and cause you to start over and over again? No! To me it sounds much easier to just set a goal and do things that help you reach it.

The key is to commit to yourself. Don’t even think about it as your goals. Just think about what you want. Until you can commit to you, there is a substitution going on. You are substituting ease for success. You are substituting your comfort for your goal. In other words, you are substituting something that may be easier for something you know you want.

When you commit to yourself you will be successful. When you commit to doing what is easy, you will not be. That’s not completely true, as you will be successful at taking the easy route. That may lead you somewhere, but it is not likely to be the destination you had in mind when you set your goal.

By committing to yourself and your goals you are saying that there is no substitute for your goals. When you refuse to find a substitute for your goals, you are also saying that there is no substitute for your success.