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Everybody has some goals or perhaps some kinds of resolutions they want to achieve. The question is how often do we succeed in our goals?

I would say less than 10% of the people around us achieve any kind of goals they set for themselves. There are many reasons for that. I shall just cover one of them.

One of the reasons why people failed to achieve their goals is because they allow others to set a standard and to judge their performance. What do i mean?

Suppose you set yourself a goal to lose 10 kg weight from 65 kg to 55 kg.

Now right after you set your goals, you will usually be very motivated and push ahead with workouts, or exercise regimes. And very often you see results after a very short time.

This is all good and merry until your good friend John Doe comes along and remarked that you have lost weight. You feel great, and know your workouts are working.

This goes on until your motivation runs low, which will certainly happen at some point of time, and at the same time more friends remarked that you have lost weight. Problem is you are still 5 kg away from your target weight. You think to yourself, “Now this is really tiring me, and my office workload is bearing down on me. Well I think i can afford to take a breather since so many people have acknowledged that i have lost weight!”

Do you go through a similar thought process?

Very often once you take a breather, you lose the momentum. Its not a surprise that many did not achieve their goals because of this.

They would then go back doing the same things that made them gain weight - eat junk food, not exercising, and before you knew it, they are back to square one. Come next year, they set the same new year resolutions.

Now doesn’t that sound familiar? Don’t we all have new year resolutions that seems to be the same every year?

It has happened to me before and it might happened to some of you as well.

What happened was we begin to shift the responsibility of judging our performance from ourselves to others. We begin to think if others feel we are ok, we are ok!

The problem is you never know what your friends might be thinking. Some might be too concerned about you, and for the slightest improvement made, like for example, lose a bit of weight, and they heap praises upon you. Some might be too harsh on you, and kept saying you are not any better than before, even if you did made improvements.

Be your own judge. That way you know whether you should continue or change or maintain your strategy. Besides no one know your performance better! And why let others control how you feel? Why let others determine whether you are happy or sad for that day or not?

Keep your goal in mind, set your own standards, and most important of all, be your judge.