As you can imagine I spend a lot of time talking to people about what they want to accomplish. In fact, after 14 years of talking to people about their goals, I have learned that what most people think are goals are something else.
A few years ago I wrote a blog post entitled Top 5 Reasons People Don’t Make Their Goals. The number one reason people don’t make their goals? They are not big enough. Yes, you read that correctly. Contrary to everything you have been taught about goals, setting attainable goals creates ordinary performance. Attainable goals aren’t goals at all, they are simply tasks. Tasks are important, but they aren’t challenging or exciting and consequently are often left undone. Think about the psychology of it for a moment. If you create a “goal” that you can already see how to accomplish, that is not a goal at all; it’s a task, and tasks are boring. Attainable goals also don’t require a whole lot of effort or engagement. This is not a recipe for big achievements or high performance. The paradox of goals is that the best goals are the ones that are so big you have no idea how you might accomplish them. Now that is exciting.
I hear you. You are thinking, What if I make a big goal and I don’t achieve it? That is a common question. My answer. So what? You are probably not making all of your “goals” right now, so what’s the difference. You can either not make a small goal, or not make big goal ~ your choice. But what if you did make it? Or even made it half way? Would that be better than not trying at all? Bottom line is your goal has to be big, exciting, scary and take everything you’ve got to make it. Otherwise what’s the point? It’s your choice: make a giant, scary, seemingly unreachable goal and move toward something extraordinary or make your task list and get on with your mediocre achievements.
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