Decrease Your Goals In Order to Achieve Them

It seems counter-intuitive, but by setting smaller goals, with lots of checkpoints along the way, you set yourself up for success in achieving those goals.

Set Achievable Goals

Make sure that you set goals that you can actually achieve. I found myself wanting to run a marathon with a goal of an average of 8 minute, 30 second miles. I had, at that point, never run more than 5 miles.

Setting unachievable goals left me feeling disappointed, and like I had to just keep pushing myself harder and harder.

There was no room for celebration because I had set myself up for failure by setting a goal I was unlikely to achieve. Just finishing the marathon was a feat in itself, but I wasn’t giving “to finish a marathon” as the goal. And you have to give yourself goals that you can celebrate small successes along the way, and you should have someone (or a group) of people with whom you can share those celebrations.

Share your Goals and Your Steps to Success

Sharing your dreams can be scary. It requires you to open up and tell someone else what you want to do with your life. And finding the right people to support you in that can be difficult. However, there are four primary reasons to share your goals with others…

  1. Sharing a goal you have makes it more real.
  2. By sharing with people who support you (so be careful about who you choose), you can get much more support to push through the difficulty that will inevitably come while working toward any goal.
  3. Speaking about your goal lets others offer perspective and insight.
  4. When you show you are open to sharing something personal to you, others feel closer to you, which gives you an opportunity to gain a deeper connection with someone else, in the process of achieving your goals.

Let go of your ego and cut yourself some slack

By making your goals smaller and sharing them with people who actually support you, you acknowledge that you are open to being a beginner, which lets you have less tension, less fear, and more joy, as you become the greatest version of yourself, no matter what your goals may be.

Misti Burmeister has been helping organizations and individuals to achieve goals more than 15 years.