The secret to achieving your life goals

Are you tired of setting goals and failing to achieve them? Do you ever blame someone else or your circumstances for it? Do you see really successful people and think that they are just lucky but you’re not?

If you answered yes to any of these questions, I don’t want you to worry, because I used to be in the exact same place, and it doesn’t feel nice in there.

I used to think that goal-getters were just made to be like that, that they must have been unique creatures, but that normal people couldn’t just be like them. Well, let’s debunk lie number 1, shall we? We are all made unique and perfectly able to set our goals and achieve them, so the best thing we can do for ourselves is to stop comparing ourselves with others.

So what is the problem then? Is it a better strategy that people have, that helps them move their life forward? Is it that they have more money, time, support, you name it, than you do?

Is it that they want to achieve their goals more than you do?

The answer is a sound: No, No, and No.

Do you want to know the real secret behind those who set their goals and achieve them regularly? CONSISTENCY.

Yep, I said it.

You might be thinking, “What? Is it that simple? How’s that going to help me?”

Well, let me help you, because in this post I really want you to be as clear as possible about consistency, and I also want to give you a few tips to improve this in your life, so that you can also achieve whatever you want.

Cambridge Dictionary defines consistency as: the quality of always behaving or performing in a similar way, or of always happening in a similar way.

I love this definition because it highlights the word “always”. Not sometimes, not every other day, not when you feel like it. Always.

And THAT is the problem with us very often. We start working on something, we are very excited about it and we go all in, but then days go by, then weeks, then months, and we get tired because we’re not getting the results we want.

THAT is what prevents us from truly becoming successful and achieving our goals. It’s giving up because we’re not “there” yet; it’s letting self-doubt creep in and tell us that maybe we’re not getting there because we’re not good enough and we’re doing it all wrong; it’s allowing the shine of social media to make us feel like everyone is making progress but us.

Did you ever want to get healthy, you had ONE healthy meal, and you were immediately expecting to lose weight, feel less tired, get better skin, etc. I know I did!

I hope you don’t mind me sharing a quick story with you.

When I was 13 my mum took me to see an endocrinologist, because I was clearly overweight and I had developed type 2 diabetes. Having my sister with type 1 already, she was obviously concerned about my health.

So I was put on a strict diet, because that’s how you cure type 2 diabetes apparently. I used to weigh everything I would eat, from salad, to bread, to the oil I’d use in my food, it definitely wasn’t fun. It wasn’t fun especially when after the first two weeks of sacrifices and “good behaviour”, I went to get my check up only to realise I did not even lose half a kg. I got SO discouraged that I just wanted to give it up and get back to my old habits.

But I kept pushing, because I was doing it for my health and to overall feel better with myself. I kept pushing because I kept telling myself over and over again, that the only way I could see progress was to stick to it no matter what. When I went back one month later, I was so pleased to see that I had gone down a few kg. Then we started the maintenance, it was less strict but I still had to follow it if I wanted to keep my results, so I did it for a while, and it definitely worked.

Now I’m not going to be telling you the whole story of how when I moved to the UK at 19 I got back aaaall the weight I had lost, then I tried all sorts of diets and kept going back and forth with a healthy lifestyle.

But today I’m proud to say that I have a much better relationship with food, a strong passion for taking care of my health, and I don’t weigh things anymore. I’m in the best shape I’ve ever been because I finally love my body just how it is, and most importantly I’ve been consistent with healthy eating for the past 3 years. It doesn’t feel like a chore to me anymore, and I even miss my vegs and fruit if I don’t have them regularly.

Please hear me out: this would never have happened if I hadn’t stayed consistent with eating healthy. Yes I fell off a few times, but for the past 3 years the journey has been GOOD!

I’m going to say it again. You will never see progress unless you stay consistent, and you will need to be patient and give it time.

It’s sad that we live in a generation where we want everything right now, because it is really difficult when you’re trying to achieve long term goals.

So what are some of the practical things that you can do to stay consistent? Here are some of my tips for you.

5 tips to stay consistent with your goals

1. KNOW YOUR WHY

This is probably the most important thing you need, because your why will push and motivate you every time you’re feeling like giving up. You don’t just need to kind of know what you want, you need to be crystal clear on your goals and the reason why you want to achieve them. Is your goal to be healthy? Maybe the why behind it could be that you want to be able to look after your children and have energy to run after them, or you have a condition that can only be managed with a healthy lifestyle, or you lost someone you loved because of a disease and you want to reduce the chances of that happening to you too. I surely didn’t enjoy working out, but when I got clear on my why, it became a lot less painful for me.

2. HAVE SYSTEMS IN PLACE

The truth is that life is messy, busy, complicated, and sometimes we don’t have the mental space to always push ourselves and do the hard work every single time. So it becomes really useful to have systems in place that will help you to remain consistent with your goals, but that won’t require so much energy from you every day. When I decided that I wanted to be healthy, I knew I didn’t have the time to cook something from scratch every single day, and I also knew that if I didn’t set up a system for it, I would have probably given up very quickly. So that’s when I started meal planning, so that I didn’t have to invest so much time and energy into cooking (and cleaning!) every day, but I could still enjoy healthy meals and make sure I would stay on track with my goal. You can use systems if you’re trying to save money, grow your business, be productive, and so on.

3. DON’T COMPARE YOUR JOURNEY TO ANYONE ELSE’S

I have said this already and I will say it again: comparison is the thief of joy. Especially in the social media age, everyone wants to show their accomplishments and wins, but not many people are willing to show what it takes to get there, the tears, sweats, and lessons along the way. So please do yourself a favour and don’t look at what other people are doing, unless it inspires you to work harder and gives you the motivation to keep going. But if it starts to make you feel jealous, or like you’re less than, or like you’re not good enough and you’ll never be able to succeed, then stop right there. You are perfectly able to achieve whatever you set your mind to, so focus on your race and get to the finish line.

4. HAVE AN ACCOUNTABILITY PARTNER

I know that if you’re at the beginning of this journey, or if you’re someone that struggles with being consistent, doing it alone might be hard, so my advice is to look for an accountability partner. It could be a family member, or a friend you trust, or even someone online that is on the same journey as you (Facebook groups are great for that!). You can motivate each other and push each other to achieve whatever you want to achieve. And when you don’t feel motivated, when you feel like giving up, you will have somebody cheering you on and encourage you to keep going. I can assure you that having someone that checks in with you regularly, will make a huge difference in the progress you make with your goals.

5. TRACK YOUR HABITS

I don’t know what this does to us in our minds, but I have seen a HUGE difference and improvement in how consistent I stay with my goals, once I track down everything on a daily basis. A habit tracker can really change your life, because at the end of every day/week, you will find yourself checking things off from your list, and seeing that on paper will help you to feel more motivated and stick to it in the long run. If you’re interested in having your own habit tracker to monitor all your daily habits, you can purchase mine on my shop! And by the way, just like you need to track your good habits to take you further in your journey, you also have to get rid of other habits that are not so good for you but that might, in fact, prevent you from making progress. If you want to know what I’m talking about, check out this post where I talk about bad habits and how to break them.

It’s hard to be consistent when you’re not seeing results. It’s hard to keep working out when you don’t see a 6 pack a month later. It’s hard to keep showing up online when nobody is engaging with you. It’s hard to keep studying when all of your efforts seem to change nothing for you. But let me tell you, whenever you do something to achieve your goals, you’re making a small step forward, and that will always count as progress. You might not see it yet, but I can assure you the results are coming. Consistency is painful, it’s uncomfortable, but if you want to see growth, you need to go through it. I promise you that you will see progress if you don’t give up!