Most Likely Consequence Of Setting Unrealistic Goals
Have you ever set yourself a goal and failed miserably to achieve it? What happened? Did you just give up? Was the goal a bit ridiculous in hindsight? How did it make you feel to fail? I think anyone who has failed at a goal they have set themselves knows that it doesn’t feel good. It can make you doubt yourself. You lose motivation to even bother trying again. There are other consequences of unrealistic goals too but what is the most likely consequence of setting unrealistic goals?
As the old saying goes “forewarned is forearmed”. In this article, we’ll dive into some of the fascinating details about unrealistic expectations, how to set better goals, how to avoid unattainable goals, and how to get the right motivation and keep it until you achieve your goal. So you’ll have no more hopeful to-do lists. Instead you’ll learn how to set goals, form a good action plan and have greater motivation than you’ve ever had before and a sense of accomplishment.
What Does Unrealistic Mean?
This is a question I get asked a lot because many people get confused about the meaning of the word “unrealistic”. As one guy said to me at a seminar I gave once “Surely the word unrealistic is totally subjective.”
To be truthful, he’s totally correct. What seems unrealistic to me might be totally realistic to you. The Collins English dictionary describes it as
“if you say that someone is being unrealistic, you mean that they do not recognise the truth about, especially about the difficulties involved in something they want to achieve”
Source: Collins English Dictionary
What Is Likely To Happen If You Set A Goal That Is Not Realistic?
There are a number of things that can happen as a result of having unrealistic goals which you’ll find listed below.
- De-Motivation – your motivation will seep away as your critical analytical mind keeps telling you “this is pointless” or “don’t even bother trying”
- Feelings Of Failure – this doesn’t make you feel good about yourself
- Dent To Your Confidence – you’ll be less likely to try in future
- Negative Self Talk – this can encourage negative self talk as that inner critic tells you – “see, I was right, you’ll never succeed”
- Negative Generalisation – in other words “if I’m no good at this, maybe I’m no good at that either”
Examples Of Unrealistic Goals That Ended Up Being Successful
While unrealistic goals may not be the best idea, some of the most unrealistic goals in the world have also led to the greatest business successes. For example Henry Ford, back at the very beginning of the motor car era, told his engineers to go and make a certain type of engine. They told him it was impossible. He responded by saying “that’s fine. Make it anyway”. You could argue he was being completely unrealistic.
Elon Musk set himself a goal of mass manufacturing electric cars. He started in a most unrealistic way, by producing a very expensive, high end model first. I’m pretty sure people told him he was mad, but he did it anyway. Even the company’s financial results were telling him at certain stages that he was losing a bucketload of money. He still didn’t leave anything get in the way of his dream. People who invested in Tesla at the very beginning are now rather rich as a result of believing in Musk. You could argue he was being unrealistic.
Yet for many people, setting an unrealistic goal guarantees them of feelings of failure and deflation. The reason that people have succeeded with unrealistic goals is really down to their mindset. Some people are just damn stubborn! They will just keep going even though other people are telling them that their goal is unrealistic.
Self Hypnosis Audio For Achieving Goals
Self hypnosis can be a great tool to help you to achieve your goals. This powerful audio is 25 minutes long.
What Will Happen If You Have Unrealistic Expectations?
When we fail, it is human nature to start to question ourselves. “Why did it have to happen to me?”. “What’s wrong with me?”. “I’m just a failure”. Many human beings start to think like this. We have unrealistic standards and don’t start with the acceptance that we could fail. I believe we always have to factor in failure as a possibility and have a good attitude to it. Taking the attitude that a failure is just a setback on the road to ultimate success is much better than being negative towards yourself.
Realistic vs. Unrealistic Goals
An unrealistic goal is simply one that you do not believe you can achieve. A realistic goal is one where you immediately think “yeah, I can probably do that”. By the way, there is no universal truth about what is realistic and what’s not realistic. Its whatever your opinion or belief tells you.
The goal of being a succesful mass-market producer of electric cars probably seemed a pretty big goal to Elon Musk but he was able to believe that he could achieve it. That’s why it even exists today. If you came up with that idea today, could you honestly say to me that you could believe that would be realistic for you?
I am not encouraging you to compare yourself to Elon Musk. So please don’t ask yourself “what’s the matter with me – why can’t I believe and he can?” That would be missing the point completely.
Turning Unrealistic Into Realistic For You
To use an analogy, if I set a task for you of travelling from North Carolina to New York and asked everyone reading this article to email me their plan to get there, some people would go on a road trip and keep driving until they got there, sleeping in their car if necessary along the way. Other people might book two or three hotels along the way and break the journey into a three day thing. Other people will hop on a plane and be there in a couple of hours.
And here’s the thing – it really doesn’t matter how you get there. (In other words, if you have to break a goal down into a couple of more realistic goals, that’s fine). All that matters is getting to the end destination.
For some people, if they set unrealistic goals, they get demotivated, believe they can’t do it or they’ll never achieve it. That’s like that journey from North Carolina to New York. Forget about the complexities of how to get there. Adjust your plan if necessary because all that matters is getting there. And for that reason, your flexibility in terms of changing the plan is vital.
By the way, you do this type of adjusting all the time. For instance, if you are driving a car at 70mph on a highway and then you spot some slow traffic up ahead, you adjust your speed. Otherwise you’ll slam into the car ahead, right? It makes perfect sense! How many people never think to adjust their plan, break it down into smaller, more achievable steps, and just give up?
Self Hypnosis Audio For Achieving Goals
Self hypnosis can be a great tool to help you to achieve your goals. This powerful audio is 25 minutes long.
Why Is It Important To Set Realistic Goals?
If you’re one of those fortunate individuals who has 100% belief in yourself, a stubborn attitude and are well practiced in commiting to and achieving a goal no matter how long it takes then you probably don’t need to read this section. For everyone else, here’s where you learn why is it important to set realistic goals.
If you’re not naturally blessed with rock solid self belief then you have to build it – step by step. As a result of practicing it, you can get there, just as well as that person who has rock solid belief right from the start. You might have to take a different route though. The route of the person full of self belief is one big goal and they know how to stay the course until they achieve it.
For the rest of us, we have to set a number of achievable goals along the journey towards the same destination. The reason is because that’s what will keep our motivation going and, consequently, that’s what will strengthen our weaker self belief.
I would always say to everyone I teach goal setting to, that whether it is one big, long-term goal or a number of smaller, short-term goals, that’s individual to you and where you are currently at in terms of self belief. I believe the important aim should be to avoid demotivators at all costs. In other words, don’t set a goal that you are certain you are going to fail at.
Goal Setting Theory Of Motivation
Psychologist Edwin Locke is attributed with coming up with the goal setting theory of motivation. He reckoned that “specific and challenging goals along with appropriate feedback contribute to higher and better task performance”.
Locke reckoned there were a number of criterion for goal setting to be successful. They are as follows –
- Specific – goals have to be specific (not vague).
- Challenging – goals must stretch you but must, at the same time, be attainable
- Acceptance – goals must be accepted by the person tasked to complete them.
- Regular Feedback – there must be regular feedback during the goal attainment process in order to monitor performance
- Evaluation – goals must include a method of evaluation
- Deadlines – there have to be specific dates by which certain milestones are reached
- Learning goals are better than set performance based goals
- Group goal setting is as effective (and sometimes better than) individual goal setting (within an organisation or group).
Self Hypnosis Audio For Achieving Goals
Self hypnosis can be a great tool to help you to achieve your goals. This powerful audio is 25 minutes long.
What Is Intrinsic Motivation And Why Is It Important?
Intrinsic motivation is essentially where we get our motivation from inside ourselves. There used to be an old idea that if you want to motivate someone, just dangle an incentive in front of them and they would get motivated. Everyone kind of bought into that for a long time.
This was what use to happen in many sales organisations. Salespeople had weekends away or 14-night cruises dangled in front of them and the bosses of those organisations used to think that was all they need to do to motivate their sales force.
Here’s a story about motivation from my personal experience. I spent many years in sales myself and from conversations with other sales directors, I heard this story about how this company offered a fantastic 14 night cruise of the Carribean with a large amount of cash as spending money. They were expecting huge returns from their sales force.
Imagine their horror when, instead of boosting sales, it actually had a negative effect and, as a result, sales actually decreased. How it played out was that within the first month of the incentive, two salespeople streaked ahead of everyone else. As a result, everyone else gave up, thinking that one of those two were definitely going to win it and that they didn’t have a hope of competing.
Researchers have actually found that motivation that comes from inside is much better. There are three main types of intrinsic motivation which I’ve listed below:
- Autonomy: we all like to feel in control and when a job or career encourages us to take more control, we tend to love the job more than if we have no say in things.
- Mastery: when we take pride in learning something or getting good at a certain task as part of our goal. It’s great if our goal helps us to achieve mastery but if it’s a challenging goal that we just can’t seem to succeed at, this can be a bad thing
- Purpose: we all secretly desire having a purpose, so if our goal can give us a sense of purpose, that adds to our motivation to achieve that goal
What Is Extrinsic Motivation And Why You Need To Be Wary Of It?
The problem with extrinsic motivations can be that we don’t feel any “buy in”. If the specific goal is set for us by someone else and we don’t really care that much about it, we can just go through the motions.
This, of course, can cause us to question whether we could really be bothered. In this example, there is very little sense of purpose, the challenge doesn’t seem that exciting and it just has a negative impact on motivation in the long run.
So when you are setting goals, whether they are high goals or smaller goals, the first step is to take a closer look at how rewards are structured for achieving the various steps to your goal,. This is just as applicable for personal goals as it is for job or career goals. .
The right answer is probably to strike a balance. Extrinsic motivations don’t have to be all bad but if they are the only thing motivating you, you’ll find, especially with the more difficult goals, that you may not have enough motivation from this alone to succeed.
Self Hypnosis Audio For Achieving Goals
Self hypnosis can be a great tool to help you to achieve your goals. This powerful audio is 25 minutes long.
Goal Setting Quotes
Here are some inspirational quotes about goal setting that are my personal favourites
- “Goal setting is the secret to a compelling future” Tony Robbins
- “The people who are crazy enough to think they can change the world are the ones who do” Steve Jobs
- “When it is obvious that the goals cannot be reached, don’t adjust the goal – adjust the action steps” Confucious
- “A person should set his goals as early as he (she) can, and devote all of his (her) energy and talent to getting there. With enough effort he (she) may achieve it. Or he (she) may find something that is even more rewarding. But in the end, no matter what the outcome, he (she) will know he (she) has been alive” Walt Disney
- “I guess it comes down to a simple choice really. Get busy living or get busy dying” Andy Dufresne (played by Tim Robbins) from the movie The Shawshank Redemption
I explain that last quote to my clients by explaining that really living means commiting to something, whether that’s a relationship, or a career goal, or a hobby, or even playing football.
I clearly tell them what is the most likely consequence of setting unrealistic goals. And I get them to paraphrase that quote from The Shawshank Redemption into an affirmation they can regularly say to themselves – “Get busy succeeding at achieving a goal or get busy failing – it’s up to me. It’s up to me to believe”.
Goal Setting Examples For Work
Here’s an example of a typical career-related goal that many people set for themselves. One of my clients from a couple of years back called John told me how his main goal career-wise for that calendar year was to do a Masters degree by night. His reason was so that he would achieve advancement at work.
John had a wife and three kids (all under 5 years of age). So here are a couple of questions I asked John just to clarify whether he had really thought this out. (In other words, was it a realistic goal, or was he setting himself up for failure?).
- “Are you certain that the company you work for would regard having a Masters degree as one of it’s criterion for promoting you?” John blinked a couple of times and said “I don’t know”. I answered “well I think it would probably be a good idea to check that out first, don’t you think?”
- “How much time will this take (ie. how many nights attending the course and how many hours of actual study)?” John answered by saying “its two nights per week and one Saturday morning per month”. So I pressed a bit more and aske “and how much study time?”. John smiled and said “as much as it takes”. I explained that vagueness would be fine if he was a single guy with no kids and no commitments. I said that I reckoned he was storing up a lot of arguments with his wife in the future by not telling her all of the facts now.
- “How would your wife feel about being left alone to mind the three kids while you either attend the course?” This was the most concerning response of all. John said “I don’t know – I haven’t talked to her about it”
From the questions above, I’m hoping that you’re learning that John wasn’t setting himself an achievable goal. He was in the process of setting himself a goal that could end with him getting divorced which he hadn’t even considered. By the way, you might think this is a story made up just for the purposes of this article. The amusing (or concerning) thing is – this is a true story.
The philosopher Socrates put it very well when he said “to know thyself is the beginning of wisdom”
So, maybe you’re not a Henry Ford or an Elon Musk. They are able to think up outrageously big goals and then stick to them stubbornly with persistence and desire until they get there. Maybe you’re not them. Maybe you’re the guy or girl who prefers achieving small bite-size chunks, feeling good about that and subsequently moving on to a slightly bigger goal.
Whichever you are – that’s fine! Problems only happen when you don’t know yourself and if you’re the “bite-size” person trying to take on the huge goal. It’s like trying to squash a square peg into a round hole. It probably won’t go.
FREE Goal Setting Worksheet
Download this goal setting worksheet in pdf format right now. Print it off as many times as you need for different goals. This will help you to get focussed, to commit to action and stay on course. Best used in conjunction with “Achieve Your Goals” self hypnosis audio recording.
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How To Set Good Goals
I believe it’s important to start by defining your long-term goals. Included in these can even be one or two seeingly impossible goals if you wish. Remember, your current situation is irrelavant. We can achieve anything that we can imagine, believe in and commit to.
Stepping down from your long term goal, I believe it’s also important to have medium term goals. Finally, break those down into smaller goals. Structuring your goals into those three tiers will give you a better understanding of what will be necessary to achieve those.
No matter what types of goals you have, it is always a good idea to make sure that you are using the S.M.A.R.T. goal setting formula. S.M.A.R.T. is an acronym for
- Specific: avoid being too vague when you set goals. The more specific you can be, the better.
- Measureable: measurable goals are really important in terms of knowing at any given time, how close we are to achieving them.
- Achievable: your mind has to be able to say “yeah, I can do that!”. This doesn’t mean that big targets are unachievable, but you might need to set a number of smaller targets first.
- Relevant: the goal needs to fit with your life purpose. You need to be able to satisfactorily answer the question “why am I doing this?”
- Time-Constrained: we need to have a set time frame within which we intend to achieve the goal.
What Are The Consequences Of Setting SMART Goals?
Remember what your aim is in setting a goal in the first place. You want to actually achieve it, right? S.M.A.R.T. goals help you by making your goal specific so you can actually focus on it with precision. They help with motivation because you know that your goal is definitely achievable if you’ve used the S.M.A.R.T. process. Because setting a goal in this way leads to generating a clear plan to achieve it, the goal naturally becomes more achievable which increases your motivation to stay on course, mainly because you are really clear about your plan.
Why Is It Important That Goals Be Measurable?
Ask anyone who has started out with a new year’s resolution to lose weight, but who doesn’t have a weighing scales. Not being able to measure their progress leads to that person convincing themselves that they haven’t lost anything and maybe even giving up on their diet because of it. This is why many of the well-known weight loss clubs such as Weight Watchers and Slimming World have a “weigh-in” every week.
Now, of course, people have different opinions of that. Some people don’t like that because if they haven’t lost what they expected to lose, seeing the result on the scales display can be deflating. However, most people get a bit of a buzz from seeing a small downward trend in their weight.
This also applies to any other goal you set. If your goal really is measureable, this gives you an opportunity to praise yourself or reward yourself which adds to motivation and helps you to stay on course for as long as it takes to achieve your goal.
What Are Stretch Goals?
A stretch goal is one that is deliberately challenging. When you contemplate this goal, you should not think “that’ll be easy!”. Instead, you should be very aware that in order to achieve that goal, you are going to have to push outside of your normal comfort zone.
These are different from SMART goals because they are not quite as realistic. While they may not be totally unrealistic, they will involve doing more work or spending more time to achieve.
Self Hypnosis Audio For Achieving Goals
Self hypnosis can be a great tool to help you to achieve your goals. This powerful audio is 25 minutes long.
Self Hypnosis Goal Setting Audio Download
When you use the free goal setting pdf that I gave you a little earlier on in conjunction with my powerful self hypnosis audio entitled “Achieve Your Goals”, hypnosis does the hard work for you. Listening to this recording every day for thirty days is a great way of overcoming the detrimental effects of having done it incorrectly in the past. It will help you focus on the right goals, and it reminds you every day of the major reasons that it is important for you to succeed.
By listening to this recording every day, you’ll eliminate lack of motivation and focus on your desired outcomes as if they have already happened. Negative emotions will be drained away every day and you’ll learn to encourage yourself every time you recognise that you are taking small steps in the direction of your large goals. Using the goal setting pdf at the same time helps to achieve the right balance between the conscious mind and the unconscious mind so that a fear of failure simply never happens.
Through self hypnosis, you can recalibrate your unconscious mind to turn up that “realistic vs unrealistic” thermostat so that you can set bigger goals and believe they are achievable.
When you listen every day for at least thirty days, all of the good habits that you’ll need in order to succeed will be suggested to you over and over again. That will help you believe you have enough persistence, enough desire and enough commitment to get to your destination.
Here's Another Relevant Article For You
One of the traits of people who have failed at goal setting and achieving those goals in the past is a lack of self confidence. In this next article we’ll talk about How To Build Confidence In Yourself
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Author: Paul Hunter
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