Reach for the stars. It’s what I like to tell others to encourage them to get out there and accomplish their goals! Reach for the highest possible achievement you can! Most of us will not reach the stars, many of us will struggle just to get the basics down, and you know what? That is alright. The final aspects of goal setting make sure that you stay grounded. After all, you need to build the launchpad before you can lift off in the rocket ship!
I have set many, many goals in my life. This will come as no surprise to those who know me and who read this blog. Crushing goals is one of the skills I want the Dream Anvil to equip you with! I believe that all of us can get out there and achieve our dreams! I have seen it. I have experienced it. I believe you can do it too! But there is one sure-fire way to wreck the best-laid plans. One step, that if overlooked, will lead your goals to ruin. Not setting realistic goals.
There are two ways that setting overly ambitious goals can backfire. The first is related to last week’s post about tracking your progress. I call it a problem of scale. I once set a New Years’ goal of “Become a published author.” I know, cute right? Aside from that goal being pretty vague, there was no way for me to realistically achieve that goal that year. I had only written a few scripts and a couple of short stories at that point. I didn’t have a book. I didn’t have an agent! And I certainly didn’t have a plan on how to achieve any of those things! It can take many drafts and many years to land a publishing contract, many authors simply self publish these days and for good reason. It’s hard to go the traditional route! My dream was too big for just one year.
I am never going to tell you to dream small. Dream big! As big as the sky! But when you are setting goals, you need to set ones that can be tracked and then completed within a certain amount of time. There is nothing more debilitating to one’s self-esteem than to have a goal completely crushed because of scale. We can aim for the stars but we need to focus on what we can do right here, right now first or we will never get off the ground. I still want a traditional book deal, but now that goal is composed of several smaller goals like, “Write for X time this week,” “Complete one story outline by March,” “Complete NaNoWriMo in November!” Break down your dream into achievable goals and then subdivide them again and again until you have something you can do. It might seem like a lot but soon you will be on the launch pad ready to blast off!
Here’s the point, we need to set goals that we can realistically achieve. If we don’t then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment.
There is a big elephant on the launch pad that we have not addressed. And we can’t launch a rocket to the stars with an elephant just sitting there! Is your goal realistic? Is it grounded in a reality that humans currently can achieve? Here is the thing, we all want to do better in life, we all want to achieve our dreams. But, not every dream is achievable. If our goals rely on a miracle or if it relies on the involvement of others (say get a book deal, or go on a certain amount of dates) then it becomes almost impossible to reliably track and achieve that dream. In cases like this, you need to set a lower bar than maybe you would like. You can’t control if an agent will like your book or if another human will click on your profile. How would you even track a miracle? Or the advancement of scientific progress? It would be better to find concrete, realistic goals you can achieve! Don’t count on events outside of your control. In my case, my date threshold is set to just one a month*. That number might be high, it might be low, that’s why it’s got an asterisk!
Here’s the point, we need to set goals that we can realistically achieve. If we don’t then we are setting ourselves up for disappointment. How many of us have stopped setting up new resolutions because we have failed so many times in the past? Tons of us! I have been asking strangers (through my dating apps! hahaha! science!) about their New Year’s resolutions. All of them with one exception stated they didn’t bother anymore. What was the point? The point of setting up goals that are important to us, that we can realistically achieve and then keep track of is so that we build up confidence. Did you hit your week two goals?! Awesome! I bet you are super pumped! If you missed those goals then I bet you are trying to catch up for the next one! People are motivated by achievement, and if we can find that special balance of setting challenging goals and keeping up with them, then we can do anything! Except maybe touching those stars. Yeah, those would definitely kill you.