Did you miss some goals this year? Let’s be honest. We all missed some things. We set some goals and didn’t quite hit the mark. Now it’s December and we’re planning and prepping for 2022 … and a lot of us are beating ourselves up over the things that didn’t happen in 2021. 

Just stop. Don’t beat yourself up over missing those goals. That’s the easiest thing in the world to do. You won’t get any blowback from anyone else on that. No one is going to stop you from being hard on yourself. But it’s a cop out. It’s unproductive and it doesn’t get you any closer to where you want to be.

In fact, I’m here to tell you that you shouldn’t regret missing goals—and not just because it’s unhealthy to let regret consume your time and energy. 

A missed goal is an important clue to what’s really going on in our lives.

So before you automatically roll that goal over to 2022’s list, I want you to hit the pause button. When you’re repeatedly missing a goal, there’s something else going on. There’s a bigger “why” underpinning that failure—and if you don’t figure out what that why is, you’re going to remain stuck in your tracks and miss the goal again next year. 

Instead, peel back the layers around that goal. Sit with yourself. Sit with your soul. Ask yourself why you didn’t hit your goal … 

Did you not have enough time? Audit how you spent your time this year. Did you get caught up in people pleasing? Are you not setting your own agenda? Do you spend too much time on being “busy?”

Do you have the right skill set? If you don’t, then rolling over that goal to another year won’t change that. Make developing your skill set the goal for 2022.

Do you have the right power pack? Are you surrounding yourself with the right people who can help you reach the goal? Should building out your network be the goal for 2022?  

Is this someone else’s goal? Or is it just something that “everyone else” is doing? It’s the next step on the path, but is the path even one you want to be on? You can have the right goal—but be on the wrong avenue!

Is this a “should” goal? Are you striving for an outcome that you’re supposed to want—but don’t truly care about? When you’ve done something for so long, you don’t even question it anymore. Have you outgrown or moved on?

Does this light your soul on fire? When you’re setting a goal over and over and still not meeting it, that’s your soul trying to tell you something. Maybe this isn’t where your talents and purpose lie.  

Are you struggling with prioritizing yourself? You may want a particular goal and it may be exactly what your soul desires, but if you’re always putting other people’s needs first your goals will tend to fall by the wayside.

Then dig even deeper on those questions! If you didn’t have time to accomplish that goal, why didn’t you have the time? Whose priorities were you tending to? Why are you putting their needs before your own? If you didn’t have the right skill set, what skills do you need? How can you get them? 

Simply rolling over a goal from one year to the next won’t work unless you know exactly why you didn’t accomplish the goal this year. When your goals are out of alignment with your soul’s desire, it’s HARD to get things done, to do things that aren’t really you. It’s hard to fake it.

You have to ask yourself the hard questions about what you did and didn’t get done this year. Not asking those difficult questions chips away at your soul. You can’t walk in your brilliance when your soul can’t express itself fully. And the world needs that from you in 2022. More than ever, the world needs your talents, your passions, your why for being here. 

So don’t regret those missed goals. Do not beat yourself up over them. Do not default to “what’s wrong with me?” Offer yourself grace to gain perspective. Get excited about doing the soul work! Missed goals are clues to your truer self—let them point the way.

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