Episode 123: How Big Goals Simplify Success

Show Notes

Episode Transcript

Jesse:
You are now listening to Leverage for Growth. Hey everybody, this is Jesse P. Gilmore, founder of Niche in Control and creator of Leverage for Growth. Welcome to the Daily Leverage Edition. Today’s topic is this, walking the pathway to impossible. How big goals simplify success. Sit back, relax, and welcome to today’s Daily Leverage. Do you ever feel overwhelmed by all the potential ways to reach a goal? Surprisingly, research on pathways thinking reveals that framing goals as ambitious or even impossible projects can provide more clarity and direction than smaller objectives. Let’s explore why. Pathways thinking emphasizes how we mentally chart out routes to achieve goals. Studies by psychologist C.R. Snyder uncovered that people with high hope tended to be more successful at reaching goals. So why? Because envisioning a singular pathway towards an ambitious goal focuses energy and fosters creativity to make it happen. High hope individuals display greater problem solving abilities. This is partly because pathways thinking promotes lateral thinking and outside of the box solutions. When there’s only one path to your audacious goal, Your brain creatively searches for possibilities, but give yourself too many paths to a small goal and you’ll get into analysis paralysis. Harness pathways thinking by defining a clear, ambitious goal, then focusing intently on one pathway to get there. Be specific in setting milestones. Eliminate distractions and alternate routes. Your aim is to progress step by step towards your big destination. So why do impossible goals help? They focus us to unlock our potential rather than playing it safe. They provide direction and urgency. Think of John F. Kennedy’s big, hairy, audacious goal of sending a man to the moon and returning him safely to Earth within the decade. It rallied resources and innovation. So… Let’s apply pathways thinking in all of your areas. For health, set inspiring fitness goals and map the daily habits to get there. For personal growth, envision your best self and the steps to become that person. For relationships, define your ideal family or relationship environment and the actions to create it. For business, set ambitious visionary goals and reverse engineer the strategies to achieve them. So take some time to define one seemingly impossible goal in your health, personal growth, relationships, and business. And then chart out the most direct singular path to make each thing happen. What creative solutions emerge when you’re focusing your energy? A pathway’s thinking suggests that we can simplify success by framing audacious goals and identifying the unique route to get there. as Ralph Waldo Emerson said, do not go where the path may lead, but go instead where there is no path and leave a trail. So how will your impossible goals guide your trail?