Would you like to feel more accomplishment in your life? Does time move swiftly without any personal satisfaction that your life has a sense of purpose? While accomplishment is defined differently for each person, the point is to evaluate yourself and become proactive with how you spend your time.

Many Americans do not set personal goals themselves. Most people spend more time planning their two-week vacations than planning their lives. You are cheating yourself if you simply move forward without a plan with the hope that it will all work out. Everyone needs goals, direction, and purpose for life. Because everybody needs goals, they have the opportunity and personal obligation to learn how to set and achieve them.

Goal setting is the foundation for success in life. The builder would not start construction of a home without a set of blueprints. The airline pilot would never fly across the country without a flight plan. The church paster commits time to the sermon message prior to delivery. You simply cannot design a successful life without a solid foundation of goals. If goal setting in life is so important why do most people fail to do so? Experts have identified five basic reasons why people don’t set goals.

Reason #1 is they are simply not serious about their life.  If you would discuss with anyone who has achieved something remarkable, you would learn that the achievement occurred after the person decided to get serious. Imagine an athlete becoming successful who is not serious about training for success. Success is not just going to happen. Until you become completely serious and totally determined about your goals, nothing sustaining will occur.

Reason #2 is that they will understand the importance of setting goals. If your parents are other people outside your family circle did not have goals, did not talk about goals and didn’t encourage you to set goals, a person likely grew up without skills or knowledge of the importance of goal setting.

Reason #3 is because we do not know how to do it. One of the greatest tragedies of our educational system is that our children can receive a high school or college education and never once received a single hour of instruction about how to set goals.

Reason #4 for avoiding goal setting is fear of criticism. If fear of criticism is caused by destructive criticism you receive in your early childhood and manifested in adulthood in the fear of criticism by others. Many people hold back from setting personal goals because they have found that when they set a goal, somebody steps up and tells him or her that they can’t achieve it, that they will lose their money or it is a waste of time. This criticism crushes their dreams so they learn to avoid the process for fear of belittlement.

Reason #5 and perhaps the most important reason of all, is the fear of personal failure.  The fear of failure is considered the greatest single obstacle to success in our adult life. It holds you back more than any other psychological problem.

If you feel like any of the reasons mentioned above are applicable to your current situation, take the time to address each area and overcome those barriers. The next area of focus is identifying the ten goal areas in life.