What do you do when you don’t meet your goals?

How do you react when you don’t hit the milestones you set for yourself at the beginning of the year?  Maybe the better question is; why am I writing about missing goals when we’re barley one quarter of the year in?

Well, every year I develop a life-plan with thought out goals for each area of my life.  Within the physical area of my life I had set time completion goals for two ultra-marathons I was running as well as a certain score on my Marine Corps physical fitness test.  All three of these were scheduled during the first quarter of the year, and with each one of these, I didn’t hit the goal I set for myself.

So, how does one react when confronted with missing a goal so early in the year?  The answer revolves around the three principles of learning, adapting, and resilience.

Failure can teach us a lot, if we have the ears to listen.  Asking the right questions about why we failed will help us realize what we could have done better, not only in the attempt to achieve our goals, but in the setting of the goals in the first place.  Was the goal I set SMART?   In my case, the goal I set for myself with regard to the finishing time in the ultra-marathons was not realistic based on my unfamiliarity with the terrain.  While I should have known this as I was setting my goal, I learned a great lesson – keep your goals realistic.

My other failure in the the physical arena, failing to achieve the score I hoped for on the physical fitness test, taught me to apply the second principle, that of adapting.  When I ran the same test last year, I was located in a completely different geographical region than I am now, complete with different weather and terrain.  Training the way I did on the east coast, doesn’t always work in the desert.  And so I learn to adapt and change my training techniques to suit the environment.

The final principle, that of resilience, ties learning and adapting together.  In learning what needs to be changed, we begin to adapt our methods to achieving our goals.  Resilience is the key to continuing when we fail to achieve our goals.  Resilience gives us the strength to apply the lessons learned, and to adapt in a manner that gives us a better chance of achieving our goals the next time around.

Failing to achieve our goals is never fun, and always disappointing.  But if we learn from our failures, adapt to new methods, and have the resilience to continue on, our failures will serve as the foundation to achieving newer and greater goals in the future.