Setting goals is awesome, but it does create the possibility of not reaching them. I’ve found that one reason that people don’t set goals is because they are afraid that they won’t reach them. That’s also a reason why people don’t set their goals very high. But I always say that even if you don’t reach your goals, by setting one and then taking actions to achieve it, you have achieved more than you would have without one. For example, you set a goal to read two books in one week, and you read when you can, but only end up reading 1. Although you didn’t reach your goal, you still took actions to do so and ended up reading one book, which is more than you usually do!
When you see that you won’t be able to reach your goals, you have a few choices. If it’s possible, you can extend the deadline or adjust what your goal is. You can also change what you are doing to reach your goal. Over the summer I set a goal to raise $10,000 through speaking to donate to a new urban camp that my Girl Scout council is building, but I found out very early on that that was easier said than done. So I adjusted my goal. Instead of trying to raise a specific dollar amount, I set a goal for how many businesses I would go to each month to see if they would be interested in having me speak. This turned out really well in the long run, because these goals were much more achievable and I was able to gain speaking opportunities to help me raise a lot of money. I also extended my personal deadline to raise money and am doing speaking events into the school year instead of keeping it exclusive to the summer so that I will be able to take more opportunities.