4 reasons to avoid setting goals that are too realistic

You ever set a big goal that you knew would change your life for the better, but you stopped chasing it because it was too boring?

For me, this always happens when I set a goal that’s too realistic and that doesn’t make me excited when I think about the outcome.

Luckily, there’s a pretty simple solution I found to make sure I don’t set goals that are too realistic and that aren’t exciting enough. I’ll explain that solution + the reasons that I’ve found it beneficial to go for big, exciting goals rather than realistic ones in the rest of this article.

Reason 1 - Going after a big goal keeps me motivated

Things that are challenging are interesting. Think about playing a random game on your phone. If you played the game on the easiest difficulty, you could probably dominate and win every time. But eventually, that would get boring because even though you’re winning, it’s not difficult at all.

Now if you switch the game to the highest difficulty, you’re increasing your chances of losing. But it would still be more fun to play because it’s more challenging. And, you’d definitely have more fun if you won on the highest difficulty because then you’d get a challenging win. And a win that you really had to fight for feels great.

It’s the same thing with setting goals.

Reason 2 - When I reach the goal I set, I'm gonna feel like "I should've gone for more"

The last goal I set was to get a job that would pay me a specific yearly salary I wanted. This specific salary was more than I had ever made from a job before, but it was still a safe number. I thought about going for a job that would pay an even higher salary, but I felt like that would be too unrealistic.

A few months later, I went on to get a job exactly at the salary amount I had originally set. When I realized that the job I found paid the exact amount I asked for, it made me wonder, “What if I had set my goal at a higher amount? Would I have gotten that too?”

Reason 3 - Doing somethiing I've never done before seems like the winning formula

Look around. We live in a time where the must successful things are ones that haven’t been done before.

Whoever set the goal to build chat gpt wasn’t thinking realistically. You could say the same thing about whoever came up with Bitcoin. And you can say the same about anything Elon Musk is involved with(besides Twitter).

These are times where things you’d only see in a movie, or you maybe haven’t even imagined before are becoming realities on a regular basis. These are times of people thinking outside the box and doing stuff that’s never been done before. At the time of writing this LeBron James is 39 years old and averaging 25 points & 8 assists for the NBA season. Nobody’s ever seen that before. That’s completely unrealistic.

I personally just feel that I’d be selling myself short to see all of these people and companies accomplishing unrealistic goals they’ve set while I go for something safe.

Reason 4 - It's okay to be somewhat realistic

Now, I’ve done a lot of talking about setting unrealistic and exciting goals rather than realistic and boring ones. That said, you do wanna be somewhat realistic in the goals you set. You don’t wanna set a goal that’s so unrealistic it isn’t achievable in the time frame you’ve given yourself.

For example, let’s say I had a goal to “become a billionaire in the next 12 months”. That’s a pretty unrealistic goal and it’s something I’ve never done before. That’s a good thing! But… is it achievable in the time frame that I set of 12 months? Hell no. Even if I hit the lottery, I don’t think I’d win $1 billion.

So before I start moving towards this 12 month billionaire goal, I’d maybe stop and ask myself the question: “Is this achievable in the time frame I’ve set?”

In conclusion, when I’m thinking of a goal to chase, I ask myself these 2 questions before making the final decision:

1. Is this something I haven’t done before?
2. Is this achievable in the time frame I’ve set?

If I can answer “yes” to those two questions, I can feel good that the goal won’t be too realistic or boring to follow through on.

Have a business or personal goal you’re currently going for but struggling to reach? I’ll help you put together a game plan to get it done. You can sign up for one for free at goaldoctors.com. We’ll be happy to help! — from Nick