I’ve been teaching for many years and I am guilty as hell, guilty of getting people to set reaslsitic goals. For years I preached about SMART goals, siting inevitable disappointment and demotivation as the result of setting unrealistic, unattainable goals.
It’s bollocks!
Don’t get me wrong, there’s a place for SMART goals, and it’s an incredibly useful goal-setting tool. But I was missing one thing: small, realistic goals are simply a means to an end.
I want you to start thinking about goals not in terms of whether they are realistic and unrealistic, but about whether they are end goals or means goals.
End goals or means goals?
It’s a sad fact that in our society and school system we’re told to focus on realistic means goals, study, get a job, get a pension, be a good little worker bee. The majority of people are never encouraged to dig deeply and follow their passion.
End goals, on the other hand, focus on what you really want, what you are really passionate about. And there are some really, really good reasons why you should be setting them.
So here is a list of 7 surprising reasons you should be setting unrealistic goals
Setting unrealistic goals will help you to punch fear in the chops
People wh are afraid of failing will probably never succeed, if you are afraid of failing you’ll play it safe and you won’t take any risks.
The truth is that failure is nothing but a lesson to be learned; fail, modify, try again, rinse and repeat.
If you set yourself an ‘unrealsitic’ end goal, you will probably fail. A lot. The more you fail the better you will get at bouncing back and the less you will fear it.
Case in point: David Bowie. Ths guy failed so much in his early music career, most people would’ve jacked it in and got a ‘real’ job. He went through nine different bands in 11 years, and had zero success. Have you hear The Laughing Gnome? I know it was the 60s but seriously, WTF?
Having unrealistic goals will skyrocket your self-confidence
Confidence is a byproduct of success, so how can you become confident before you are successful?
Simple, You have to stat recognising the small wins along with the big. Whatever that is to you, crossed something off that do-do list- nice one, congratulate yourself. This will propel you forward and when you hit that big goal, you’ll feel like you can take on the world.
Case in point: If Luke Skywalker hadn’t blown his own trumpet about shooting small animals back home on Tatooine, he would never have had the confidence to take out the death star. OK, that one was a stretch, I’ll do better next time.
Unrealistic goals will make you work your arse off
So you’ve punched fear in the face, or at the very least tweaked its nipples. You’re confident and laser-focussed in your goal. Now’s the part where you have to put in the work. You’ll probably surprise yourself. If your goal is really important to you, if you’ve attached so much pain to not succeeding that you’e being dragged towards success, by the short and curlys, If your goal is unrealistic enough you’ll have to put in a lot of work to reach it, but the great thinis, it won’t feel like work.
Tim Ferris said it perfectly in The Four Hour Work Week:
“Realistic goals, restricted to the average ambition level, are uninspiring and will only fuel you through the first or second problem, at which point you throw in the towel,”… “If the potential payoff is mediocre or average, so is your effort.”
Tim Ferris – 4-hour work week
Case in point: Look at Arnie (Schwarzenegger); his parents wanted him to be a small town policeman, he wanted to become Mr Universe, then decided he wanted to break hollywood, despite no acting skills and a ridiculous Austrian accent. He became one of the highest paid actors of his generation and the fucking Governor of California! How realsitic is that for a small town Austrian boy. I’ve actually been to his house (now the AS museum), dude’s come a long way!
How did he do it? Hard fucking work!
Working on unrealistic goals will stretch your comfort zone (like an old pair of underpants)
“In order to have a breakthrough you have to break something.” I snatched that quote off the internet becuase I just couldn’t come up with anything better! Hey, at least I’m honest, if not entirely original!
It depends, of course, on what your specific target is, but in doing all of this work you will inevitably be forced out of your comfort zone. The key to stretching your comfort zone is by choosing one thing, yes just one thing, that makes you scared. That feeling when you start to get butterflies in your stomach, your palms get sweaty and a little bit of pee comes out. Whatever your scary task is, in the words of Nike, Just Do It.
Once you have done it, it doesn’t seem so scary anymore. Comfort zone sufficiently stretched. Now thinking back to the self confidence) give yourself a little reward, and feel good about yourself.
Case in point: Coming back to the underpants; when you bought them 10 years ago they were nice and snug. But gradually over the years, they’ve been through a lot. With every adventure, that elastic got a little looser until that sad day when you have trouble keeping them up and they have to go in the bin. That’s exactly what happens when you stretch your comfort zone, sort of.
Setting unrealistic goals will force you to get creative
When your goals are totally out there, it’s gping to involve you doing something you’venever done before. Thinking thoughts you’ve never thought before. Dreaming dreams you’ve never dreamed…etc. Ahem!
You will reach hurdles, seemingly insurmountable mountain-like problems that will make jou want to run home with yourtail between your legs. In order to get over (or rather around) them, you will have to get creative. That’s one of the truly beautiful things about the human mind, it is biological problem solving machine, give it enough motivation and it will come up with solutions to the most impossible problems.
Don’t ask “Can i do it?”, ask “HOW can I do it?”
Case in point: Gary Vee wrote in his book, Crush It, about taking over his dad’s traditional wine business. He set the unrealistic goal of taking a boring, conservative business model to a new market. He took his dad’s brick and mortar booze shop and started marketing and selling online, reaching a massive audience and growing the company to $60 Million a year.
To reach your unrealistic goals you’ll have to get super-efficient
Setting yourself a wild, unrealistic goal means that you’ll have to organise your time, relationships, health (physical and mental), education and anything else that you need to fit in.
All of these things can and must be learned. Here’s where SMART goals come in: Set SMART mini goals for each area of your life: health, finances, mental fitness, social life; create a plan; remove distractions; swallow the frog (get the most important tasks out of the way first); and stop procrastinating.
Case in point: Pretty much every famous musician, ever. With a few exceptions. The real trick about efficiency is finding a routine that works for you, we’re all very different and work in very different ways.
Having unrealistic goals means learning something new
When you set the ‘unrealistic’ goal, you have to ask yourself two questions: “can I reach the goal now?”and “what do I need to learn to produce the outcome that I want?”
You can take this a step further:
Take out a sheet of paper and describe your current life in detail: you’re living arrangements, bank balance, relationships, work environment, diet, physical health and fitness.
If you want to dig really deep, list your beliefs and identity:
what do I believe about myself?
Who am I?
How do i describe myself to others?
How do I show up?
When you’ve done that close your eyes (well, read this first then close your eyes), imagine you have reached your unrealistic goal:
Where are you?
How do you live?
What does it look like, feel like, what can you smell?
How much do you have in the bank and what does it feel like to have that money?
Who do you hang out with and how do they make you feel?
What’s your working environment like? Where is it, who do you work with?
What do you believe about yourself now?
How do you see yourself when you look in the mirror?
Where’s the difference between those two images? That’s what you need to do to bridge the gap between your current reality and achieving your goals. Now, what is it that you need to learn in order to make those changes?
I hope this has given you some insight into the benefits of setting yourself unrealistic goals. Goals that break the rules and go against the status quo. Outside of the rules of physics and law, all other rules are ones that we have created and chosen to believe. Yes, that’s right, you have chosen to believe.
Your end goal should be the thing that you want most in the world, so let me end by asking you a cliched but massively important question:
What do you want? If you could have one thing right nowand money were no object, what would that be?
Whatever it is that’s what you should be aiming for.
