Why Most People Don't Reach Their Goals
92%, to be exact.
I read an article once that said that about 92% of people “fail to achieve their goals”.
I don’t know if that is entirely accurate. I think that the percentage of people who manage to succeed has to be difficult to truly quantify. I think I read somewhere else that 61% of statistics are made up.
But whatever — the stat gives us a jumping-off point.
Most people fail to achieve their goals in life, Jiu-Jitsu, and everything else.
I have had success in every area of my life recently, but I’ve also had countless failures (probably more failures than successes), and for the last 5 years I have been obsessed with trying to find the system for success in the different areas of my life.
Here’s why most people struggle more than necessary:
They lack specificity.
Vague goals are a sign of fear.
It’s an extension of the fear of failure, which we will talk about in a minute.
I’ll use myself as an example here because that’s how I realized this.
A few years ago, I competed in the ADCC Trials for the first time. My goal was to win a match.
I did, and then I lost the second one.
The second time I competed, my goal was to place. I took 4th.
After that, I realized that my only goal in Jiu-Jitsu now was to somehow, some way get into ADCC.
I scratched and I clawed and I made mistakes and failed and got lucky and everything in between. I eventually did get into ADCC — and I’ll talk about exactly how some other time — but it didn’t happen until I was honest with myself about the most important goal to me.
Most of the time, you get exactly what you want.
“And, when you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it.”― Paulo Coelho
They aren’t in a good environment for them.
When I left Chicago about a year ago, I started to visit a bunch of different Jiu-Jitsu gyms all over the US.
I wanted a change and I wanted to try to take my Jiu-Jitsu to the next level.
Some gyms I liked, others I didn’t like, and I ended up moving to Austin to train at the B-Team.
The difference between here and anywhere else is that my big goal of making it to ADCC is the standard. That was an expectation that I had for myself for the entire Trials saga based on the training partners that I am surrounding myself with.
Although I didn’t directly qualify for ADCC and I’ve faced a lot of challenges in the last year, the elevation in my Jiu-Jitsu from just expecting so much from myself has made the move worth it and then some.
They don’t have good systems.
Habits and systems are the backbone of achieving goals.
You do not rise to the opportunity, you fall to the level of your preparation.
This is paraphrasing a very popular quote from James Clear:
"You do not rise to the level of your goals. You fall to the level of your systems"
It’s almost a corny quote at this point because it’s so overused, but I can’t really think of a better one to describe the importance of systems in building successful approaches to training, working, and living.
Your daily routine is a system. The thought process you use to select rounds in the gym is a system. Your strength training is a system.
Hell, even the way you clean the kitchen at night is a system.
Your performance under pressure is the indicator of whether your system is working to help you develop or not.
They are their own biggest bottleneck (and don’t realize it).
I spent the last few months writing at this content agency.
This was sort of how I financially recovered from when my kind of life fell apart in January.
I was content writing for a bunch of clients and it was very corportate-y and I liked it but I didn’t love it. It was a lot of work and I’ve realized that at my age the most worthwhile investment is the time that I spend building my own projects.
However, one thing that people in the agency always said is that “clients are their own biggest bottleneck”.
I think a lot of people are their own biggest bottleneck as well.
A bottleneck is a thing that slows the process and makes it harder for you to do what needs to be done.
A lot of people get in their own way and block themselves from getting done what needs to be done.
Don’t be your own worst enemy.
They’re not willing to fail.
You need to be willing to fail at anything that is worth doing.
In competition, you can’t win unless you are willing to take the chance and lose.
One I think I do a lot in training is I put myself in a bad position and I start to concede even more from the bad position. Then I start to work out of the position.
Against a lot of my partners, I get tapped out because of this. I “fail”.
However, failure in training is safe and it sets you up for knowledge down the road. I also think that failure outside of training (like in competition or in a real-life situation) sets you up for even more knowledge at the price of a greater blow to your ego in the short-term.
The wisest people I’ve met usually have the most fucked up stories. That doesn’t mean fucked up stories make you wise, but it’s definitely part of it.
Most people, however, choose comfort over adventure. They choose easy success over ambitious failure.
And this is why most people get stuck.
Closing Thoughts
I hate making sweeping judgments about “most people”, yet I did dozens of times in this article..
If something I said in this article didn’t apply to you or you don’t agree with it, that’s okay. I’m really just going off of my experience of succeeding and failing at a lot of different goals at a lot of different times.
Don’t think about if you’re like most people or if you’re special. That’s a waste of time.
Instead, focus on:
Setting specific goals
Finding a good environment to work on those goals
Building systems so that you get the highest ROI on your work
Getting out of your own way
Being willing to fail so you can succeed
Everything I do ends up following a similar process to this. Whether it’s writing, building my Jiu-Jitsu career, learning skills on the mat, or anything else — I always focus on these 5 buckets for success at goalsetting.
Give it a try.
Worst case scenario, you fail and get a whole lot better in the process.
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