Small, Achievable Goals Are Better Than High Goals That You Never Try.
Everyone loves to set big goals. When you think about what you want to do someday, you feel good about your life, even if you haven’t reached your goal yet. However, smaller, attainable goals may have a better chance of getting you out of trouble.
As the advice blog The Art of Masculinity notes, big goals tend to lead us to inaction. Most people would agree that the view from Mount Everest is stunning, but few of us really want to get there because it’s astronomical to get there. The higher your goals, the less motivated you are to achieve them. However, if your goals are easier to achieve, you will probably get off the couch and start doing something:
The enormity of your goals ultimately leads to inaction. What we modern humans call “stress” might be better called “fear”; the physiological response is the same for both emotions. A big and daring goal looks to the brain just like a saber-toothed tiger chasing us in the forest, and the idea of paying off $ 100,000 on a student loan seems so impossible that it is even intimidating. And when our brains are faced with fear, the old amygdala goes into fight-flight-stop mode, and you assume the position of a deer stuck in headlights.
Of course, that doesn’t mean you can’t have long-term dreams. Everyone could use what to shoot at. However, if your only goal is “Someday I want to make a big Hollywood movie!” you probably won’t do as much as you would if your goal is “I’m going to shoot a video in my backyard this week.”
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