Your Goals Are Garbage

Soon it will be January and your resolution list will already be dead. You wrote down your goals with all the enthusiasm of a motivational poster. Now they're collecting dust.

Let me tell you why you keep failing: Your goals are worthless fantasies disguised as ambitions.

You don't have goals. You have wishes. You have daydreams. You have vague aspirations that make you feel good when you write them down but mean nothing when reality hits.

"I want to lose weight." "I want to make more money." "I want to be successful."

Congratulations. You've just written down what everybody wants. You're not special. You're not driven. You're just another person who confuses wanting something with doing the work to get it.

The Self-Help Industry Taught You to Fail

The self-help industry has been lying to you about goal setting for decades. They've turned it into feel-good theater.

They tell you to "dream big." They tell you to "visualize your success." They sell you fancy journals with pretty prompts. They make you create vision boards and write affirmations. They convince you that the secret to achievement is believing hard enough.

It's all bullshit designed to make you feel productive while keeping you powerless.

These gurus make millions teaching you to set goals that guarantee failure. Why? Because when you fail, you come back for the next course, the next book, the next seminar. You think the problem is you. It's not. The problem is the method you've been sold.

They've convinced you that goal setting is an emotional exercise. It's not. It's an engineering problem.

This is why I wrote The Savage Success Protocol. I was sick of watching people waste years following advice designed to inspire, not to produce actual results. The book doesn't give you more motivation. It gives you a system that actually works.

Why Your Goals Die Every Single Year

You fail because you're dishonest with yourself about what success takes.

You set goals like you're ordering from a menu. "I'll take one six-figure income, a beach body, and a successful business." Then you wait.

Most people fail because they never had real goals. They had feelings. Impulses. Inspiration that evaporated when work was required.

You set outcome goals without process. "I want to write a book" means absolutely nothing. "I will write 1,000 words at 5 AM" is a commitment.

You make goals when motivated, quit when Tuesday hits. Built on emotion, not discipline.

You tell everyone your plans. You get likes. Your brain releases dopamine. You feel accomplished without doing the work.

Your goals cost nothing. If you quit, nothing happens.

You lack clarity. "Be healthier" could mean anything. Vague goals produce vague results.

The killer: You don't believe you can achieve them. You set goals you hope will happen, not goals you know you'll accomplish.

Begin With the End in Mind (Not the Fantasy)

Stephen Covey nailed it: Begin with the end in mind. But most people turn this into vision board garbage.

Get brutally specific about the destination. Not the feeling. The actual, concrete, measurable outcome.

• ▸Define the Specific Outcome - "Deadlift 405 pounds." "Generate $250,000 in revenue." If you can't measure it, it's a wish.
• ▸Set the Non-Negotiable Deadline - Pick a date. Put it on the calendar. Miss it, you failed.
• ▸Reverse Engineer the Path - Work backwards. What has to be true at halfway? Next month? Tomorrow? Deadlift 405 in 12 months from 225? You need 15 pounds per month. Specific programming. Specific nutrition. You engineer progress.
• ▸Build Milestone Checkpoints - Break your goal into chunks so small each one is almost impossible to fail. Daily actions. Write a book? You need 500 words today. Do that for 200 days, you have 100,000 words.
• ▸Identify What You'll Sacrifice - Every goal has a cost. What are you cutting?
• ▸Define Failure Conditions - What would prove you're not serious? Write them down.

The Accountability Trap

Everyone says you need an accountability partner.

Bullshit.

If you need someone else to hold you accountable, you're building a dependency. What happens when they're not available?

You collapse. Because you never learned being responsible to yourself.

You know when you're half-assing it. You don't need someone else to tell you. You need to stop tolerating your own bullshit.

Build self-accountability:

• ▸Track Everything - Every workout. Every commitment kept or broken. Data doesn't lie.
• ▸Review Weekly - Every Sunday. Did you hit your milestones? Where did you fail? What's changing?
• ▸Pay the Price Immediately - Break a commitment? Create a consequence. Right now. Skip the workout? Do it at 10 PM.
• ▸Raise Your Standards - Stop accepting mediocre performance. Set a standard and enforce it ruthlessly.

Goals are things you hope happen. Commitments are things you make happen.

Goals live in your head. Commitments live in your calendar and daily actions.

Goals disappear when you don't feel like it. Commitments get done regardless.

The difference between achievers and fantasizers isn't talent. It's the willingness to commit fully and honor that commitment when it gets hard.

Most of you won't do this. You'll read this, feel inspired for 15 minutes, and continue setting garbage goals you'll abandon by February.

But a few of you will stop the cycle. You'll get specific. You'll work backwards. You'll build real milestones. You'll hold yourself accountable.

The Savage Success Protocol breaks down this entire system. It shows you how to set goals that actually work, build discipline that doesn't require motivation, and create accountability that doesn't depend on anyone but you. Get it on Amazon or download the audiobook on Spotify.

Are you finally ready to stop failing at your own goals?

The answer isn't in another book. It's in whether you're willing to stop lying to yourself.

Stop setting goals. Start keeping commitments.