BIG Goals

Big Goals

How are you at setting and achieving goals? Most of us have been taught a simple formula for goal setting called SMART goals. This encompasses making our goals, Specific, Measurable, Attainable, Relevant, and Time bound.

What if I were to tell you that you’ve been missing out on achieving your dreams by limiting your goals to this formula?

Ruth Soukup in her book Do It Scared redefines conventional wisdom about goals. She writes that the problem with these types of practical goals is that they actually limit us to what we find to be, “safe and achievable.”

In setting these types of goals we never really push past our comfort zone, and we will probably find ourselves settling for the status quo. 

Rather, Soukup challenges us to set BIG goals. 

“It’s daring to believe we are capable of more, and daring to push ourselves past our current limits to create something amazing.”

As I thought about it I sadly realized that I had never really set a BIG goal in my life. Yes, I’d accomplished many goals over the years, but all of them were conventional and did not require too much effort above or beyond what I could easily achieve.

More than anything I’ve learned that being consistent will eventually get you to where you want to be. Unfortunately, though, I’ve never set what she calls a stretch goal, “...one we might not fully believe is attainable.”

Learning how to play it safe comes easily to The Procrastinator, The Rule-Folower, and The People Pleaser. However, it is these BIG goals that will continue to motivate us to “stretch, change or work harder than we already are.”

I know for me, the work harder part is what holds me back. I’ve never actually had to work too terribly hard to accomplish anything. Now this doesn’t mean I haven’t put hours into studying for exams, or stayed up late to finish a project. It’s just that I learned early on to focus on the things that I am naturally good at. 

In doing so, I rarely experienced failure. When I realized that I had never allowed myself to set a pretty outrageous goal that I wasn’t sure I could accomplish, it made me sad. Soukup says the first step is to “...give yourself permission to start visualizing all the possibilities, and the freedom to dream big without self-editing or self-judgement.”

I wish I could say that I’ve conquered my fear, or know exactly what BIG goal I want to tackle. I’m not there yet, but you better believe that I’m ready to start exploring the possibilities of what the future might bring. 

How about you? Have you ever set a BIG goal, and how did it turn out?