Have You Lost Interest in Your Goals?

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Welcome back!

This time we’re going to answer the question: What should you do if you lose interest in your goals?

As usual, the first thing you need to do is examine whether this feeling is in any way linked to fear. Ask yourself these questions…

  • Do I feel overwhelmed?
  • Am I trying to do too much at once?
  • Is this goal really important to me?
  • Do I have a strong emotional reason for wanting to achieve this goal?
  • Am I procrastinating, spinning my wheels or otherwise not moving forward?
  • Do I make excuses for not working towards this goal?

Study your answers carefully – is it fear? For example, are you getting close to achieving your goal, and suddenly you lose interest? If so, that might be a fear of success taking hold.

If need be, do the “brain dump” exercise again to tap into your fears so that you can work on overcoming them.

Now let’s suppose that you’re unable to determine that fear is causing your lack of interest. Here are some other possibilities. Look these over and consider them carefully – be honest when you assess yourself…

  • Does your goal have a purpose? Here again, you need to have a good reason why you want to achieve your goal. If you don’t have a well-defined reason or purpose, you’ll lose interest pretty fast.
  • Is your goal too big? Sometimes people lose interest in their goals simply because their goals are too big or it will take too long to achieve them. If your goal will take more than a couple months to achieve, you need to break your main goal up into smaller goals. That way, you have “stepping stone” milestones that you can celebrate on the path to achieving your goal. And celebrating these smaller goals will keep you aware of the progress you’re making, as well as keep you motivated to achieve your big goal.
  • Is your goal important to you? Sometimes you choose goals based on other people’s input and opinions. If you try to achieve those goals, you’ll end up losing interest simply because the goal is important to someone else (not you). So take stock of your goals and make sure they are things that you want.
  • Did your plans change? Sometimes a goal starts out as important, but things change and we lose interest. For example, maybe your goal is to get a degree in biology. But you quickly realize that chemistry is your true passion. Thus you simply won’t be interested in the biology degree anymore because it’s not important.
  • Have you always wanted to achieve this goal? Sometimes think of an idea one moment and decide to pursue it the next. But they may realize later that it was just a passing thought, not something they really wanted.

So all of this brings us to the question: What should you do if you lose interest? First, re-evaluate your goals using the questions above. If you discover that the goal isn’t as important or purposeful as you thought it was, then choose a new goal.

But let me say this…

Switching goals midstream isn’t a problem. It’s better to do that than it is to waste time and money chasing a goal which no longer holds you’re interest. However, if you get tempted to change yet goals again later on, then you may have a problem. That may be your fear talking. Refer back to the lesson on the “grasshopper mind” for more information about what to do.

See you next time!

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