AttractAnything! (The Blog)

There are two basic strategies to goal setting: the first is to set smaller goals that you’re confident you can reach. The second is to set larger goals, even uncomfortably large, that push boundaries and maybe even scare you a bit.

Most people choose the first type of goals. The rationale usually goes something like this:

“If I set my goals too high and fail to reach them I will suffer disappointment; so it’s better to just set a small goal that I am more likely to achieve.”

This may seem like both a sensible and safe option, but in reality it’s neither. Here’s why: it is rare for a person to reach their exact goals in life — it is much more common to “get close.”

We can use income goals as an example. People who set an income goal of $500,000 a year rarely achieve that exact amount. But if your goal is $500,000, it becomes MUCH more likely that you will achieve $300,000 or even $400,000 that year, than if you set a much smaller goal — say $100,000. It’s just something about human nature — even the greatest achievers among us rarely hit the bullseye.

That’s why it is so important to set big goals — very big. For example, if you want to get into great shape, you might set a goal to eat ONLY healthy foods. But let’s keep it real: it is unlikely that you will never again eat french fries, pizza or ice cream. But if you set a BIG goal like this you will probably get a lot closer to your ideal than if you settled for a smaller goal, like only eating junk food “sometimes.”

The secret to being comfortable setting big goals is to realize that not reaching your exact goal is never a failure — it’s simply a part of the process (and of human nature). One of my coaching clients had a goal of making $80,000 annually when we first began working together. Now, if you’re flat broke or making only 20 or $30,000 per year, setting a goal of $80,000 annually might seem pretty big. The problem was, he was already making $50,000 a year, so obviously his goal was MUCH too small.

Instead, I suggested he increase his goal to a figure that was a little uncomfortable for him: $150,000 per year. It took some time working together before he began to realistically “see” and believe that this was doable for him. But after a few weeks he started to become quite comfortable with the idea, and after one month we even bumped up the figure to $160,000 per year.

The more we talked about these figures, the more he began to have faith in his ability to make that much, and even more. So what happened? Did he make $160,000 over the next year. Actually no. I spoke to him last month and he told me he ended up making $110,000 over the previous 12 months, well short of his $160,000 goal. You think he was disappointed?

Hell no! He called specifically to give me the good news, and was in a celebratory mood. He understood that had he stayed with his original goal of $80,000, there is NO WAY he would have made $110,000. It’s pretty normal to fall short of any goal we set, and by aiming much higher he was able to achieve an income far beyond his original expectations, and quite frankly, more money than he had ever made in his life.

It’s all a matter of perspective. If you begin talking about and thinking about making very large sums of money, it’s no guarantee you’re going to make that much money. But it makes it much more likely you’re going to get in that ballpark, so to speak. But guess what? If you set a smaller goal, the same human tendency to fall short still applies, so you are unlikely to reach even that goal. Had my client continued with his goal of $80,000 a year, he probably would have made $50-$60,000 — perhaps not even that much.

Life is funny, and human behavior is even funnier. I can’t tell you why most of us rarely hit our exact goals, but I have noticed this phenomenon over and over again, and in lots of different areas of life. When a field goal kicker lines up to kick a 30 yard field goal, he’s not trying to kick the ball ONLY 30 yards — he’s trying to kick that thing into the next town!

And just like the field goal kicker, we get a LOT further in life when we try to “overshoot” our goals, aiming well beyond our usual expectations. So get out there and set some outrageously high goals — kick that ball into the next town!

Filed under: Success Mindset, Wealth Attraction