We need to appreciate and understand what we are good at doing as well as what we like to do. Hopefully, these are the same, but they may not be. If they aren’t, we should analyze what it’s going to take to enjoy doing what we are good at so that we can we can have a good time performing at our best.
There is a school of thought that tells us that we should set goals that are beyond our ability to achieve them easily and that we need to stretch. While stretching a little to achieve something make us work a little harder to try to achieve something just beyond where we think we can get, it may also set up a failure.
Goals need to be sensible and reasonable. If we really don’t believe that we can achieve something but declare it as a goal because we think that will make us stretch to achieve it, we likely will never get there. Why? Because deep down we really don’t believe that we can do what we say that we want to happen. It’s just too big of a leap, It’s not realistic to us so we really won’t do what is required to make it happen since we don’t think there’s any way for it to occur.
If something that we would like to achieve is just too big of a stretch for us, we won’t work to make it happen because we believe that there is no way for this to happen. Instead of being a motivation for us to work hard to get to that point, we just give lip service to it. We write it down, repeat it frequently, but never believe that it will happen. It is just too big of a stretch for us to accept. Therefore, it never happens.
Making an income or revenue goal that is more than we have ever made previously may not be taken seriously by our subconscious or inner self because we tell ourselves that this is just not realistic. We just don’t believe it at the core level. We would like for it to occur but don’t think that it will. We actually work against ourselves to keep it from happening because it is just more than we can accept. We have been told to stretch, but it still has to be something we can achieve based on what realistically can happen.
We have to have faith in our ability to make something happen – regardless of how much we pretend that we want it to occur – or it likely will not take place. We just won’t put in the effort, or the effort that we do expend will not be in the right direction with the correct results that we are projecting that we want.
A goal a little bit beyond what we might be comfortable with but still within the realm of possibilities as far as we are concerned may well be worth pursuing. One that is beyond what we ever think could happen is just a dream and should not be expressed as something we are working toward until we gain more confidence that is could actually happen.