Here are Top Ten reasons why people fail to meet the business, work, and personal objectives they set for themselves:

1. Failing to Plan. – When you fail to plan you plan to fail.

Make a plan for every significant event in your life. If it’s starting a business, it will have to be rather detailed, with a lot of "what if" questions. If it is your monthly budget, it may be a simple note on a piece of paper listing income and expenses.

By planning for each significant step in your professional and personal life, you have far greater control over the outcome than if you allow things to just happen.

2. Flying without a Net – If having a plan is important, having a backup plan is equally important. Even with a good plan, things don’t always turn out the way we had hoped, and we need to be prepared with a fallback plan (or two) when that happens.

When planning for success, always include a plan for failure – what you will do if things don’t turn out the way you planned.

One of the reasons many homeowners are in default on their mortgages is they didn’t have a fallback plan for when real estate values would decline, as they always do in the up and down cycles of all markets. Nor did they prepare for the day when that special "teaser" interest rate that enabled them to buy the house in the first place would morph into the higher rate.

3. Being Wedded to an Idea — Many highly successful business people start out with one idea and end up going in another direction altogether.

There was a business man who sold big window signs to gas stations and supermarkets to face out from inside of the store windows. In the process, he discovered his suction cups wouldn’t stay attached over the long haul so he set about finding a suction cup that would do the job.

Unfortunately, no one made such a product, so he designed his own made out of pure virgin latex. It turned out his suction cups were so popular for so many applications that he has made a fortune just selling them. They’re the clear vinyl suction cups we all use these days that won’t come off until we deliberately pull them off.

Be flexible and look for opportunities to either expand or adapt your business or professional skills and offerings.

4. Missing Opportunities – Someone defined "luck" as simply being prepared to take advantage of opportunities when they come along. In fact, many people fail to even recognize opportunities that present themselves. Successful people recognize opportunity and seize the moment — carpe diem — to make their own luck.

I know a woman who got poor grades her first semester in college, grades that normally wouldn’t be transferable to another college.

But she moved closer to home, got a job, transferred to another university, and worked her way through school, getting all "As" from then on out.

As a result, the university gave her full credit for the poor grades from her first semester, enabling her to graduate sooner, save money on tuition, and start her career that much sooner.

She said she was "lucky," but, by getting all "As" at the new school, she made her own luck.

Watch for opportunities and be prepared to take advantage of them when they come up.

5. Having No Support Network – Whether it be family, friends, clients, or business associates, we all benefit from having a network of people who support us in our endeavors. Stories about the "loner" who made it big are rare, which is what makes them stories in the first place.

Surround yourself with people who can help you succeed, people who will give advice when you need it, and tell you things you’re doing wrong when no one else will. People who will extol your virtues and send business your way. People you can go to when you’re having problems or just stressed out.

6. Having a Low Credit Score – It used to be that good or bad credit only affected our ability to get a loan, but these days credit score affects just about everything in our lives, including our ability to land a job or get an insurance policy. People want to know the person they’re dealing with is responsible, reliable, and trustworthy and they use credit scores to help them make an evaluation.

7. Being Afraid to Fail – People keep from taking the risks they need to succeed because they are afraid of failure. This is a very human reaction, but risk-taking is a part of life.

Many decisions in our personal, professional, or business lives involve some sort of risk and some are greater than others.

I’m not talking about taking foolhardy risks, such as plunking your life savings down on "red" on the roulette table.

Determining a good risk against a bad risk is certainly a skill most of us have to learn, sometimes the hard way.

Venturing into new opportunities is a scary thing for all of us, but a friend of mine says if you’re not afraid of failing, especially when entering into a new venture, you’re probably doing something wrong, adding that fear of failure is what makes us perform better.

8. Going at it Half-Hearted – People often fail at meeting their objectives because they don’t put their entire heart and soul into succeeding. If you’re going into a new business venture or new job opportunity and you’re expecting to work a 40-hour week, you probably shouldn’t do it.

Thomas Edison defined success as 1% inspiration and 99% perspiration. Plan on spending long hours making sure you succeed at your objectives.

9. Failing to Relax – This may seem contradictory the previous advice but, with today’s busy work and family pressures, we simply must take time off now and then . . . from allowing enough time for private time with our mate to spending a week with the family in Hawaii. We need this time to relax our minds and reenergize our souls.

The person who does nothing but work night and day eventually burns out and, quite frankly, looses that competitive edge.

Be sure to take time to reconnect with your family and off-load the pressures of your tireless work schedule.

10. Hating What You Do – Many people take a job or go into business not liking what they are doing but because it has the potential of making a good income. Most of us have had to do this from time to time to meet our financial needs and commitments.

But for the long haul, people are almost always more successful at doing what they like to do rather than what they have to do.

I know a corporate executive who turned down many career paths that would have led to much higher income and more power in the organization because he loved what he was doing. People in his organization thought he was crazy, but he went to top of his profession and made the ranks of senior management by doing what he loved.

True, he made less than his contemporaries but he was able to contribute at his highest level and had the satisfaction of sleeping well at night.