A person without any goals is like a body without a soul. Without any purpose, one can never reach any place. It is so important in everyone’s life to set short-term and long-term goals that improve your education and career.
Goal setting is essential and the key to success. But the key here is if you are setting realistic goals or not. Well, anyone can set goals, but the main question is, are you working yourself to achieve them. When you set goals, you should be mindful that you are setting goals, and this is not something random that’s not going to impact you in any way. Deep thinking and knowledge about yourself and your passion are very crucial factors when setting goals.
How Setting Unrealistic Goals Can be Harmful?
Having a plan to reach your goal is very important. Unrealistic goals can be dangerous and harmful. When you set unrealistic goals, you force yourself to do things far away from your strength. When you set unrealistic goals, you will get disappointed, costing you many important things. The following are some of the dangers of setting unrealistic goals.
- Setting unrealistic goals can never let you see the other things that matter in your life. Setting goals is essential, but unrealistic plans can only make you obsessed with them, and severe obsession over them can never let you see other things.
- Setting unrealistic goals means you only have time for them, which will affect the healthy relationship you have around. Because you can’t make time for your people, you can’t talk to them, laugh with them and all the stuff. That will make your relationship hang at loose ends.
- Unrealistic goals slowly make you lose confidence. When you set unrealistic goals, you only work, work, work on it, and gradually your confidence will shatter. Unrealistic goals always end up not being achieved.
- Unrealistic goals are not meant to be achieved, which is why it is called unrealistic goals. When you set an unrealistic goal, you will always only make time for that goal, and you will not see the things that revolve around you, and that won’t make you adaptable to anything. Life is full of ups and downs, and being flexible is very important. Unrealistic goals can make you lose your flexibility.
- Setting unrealistic goals can end up in significant disappointment. I know that disappointment is a part of human life, but realistic goals can help you gradually achieve them. Still, unrealistic goals; however you try, you get disappointed.
Why You Should Set Realistic Goals?
Realistic goals are goals that can be achieved with your present mindset. You have to accomplish that goal with your motivation, skills, knowledge, and ability with what perspective you have currently. Realistic goals can be easily achieved because they are not complicated or complex like unrealistic ones. Realistic goals are also tough to achieve, but with pure dedication and motivation, you can achieve realistic goals with a mixture of hard work. Realistic goals are set with motivation and inspiration, which will always trigger you to continue working on them. Realistic goals can lead you to gradual and steady success, and they won’t lead you to frustration or procrastination.
Setting goals should help you reach that point where you can use your current mindset and hard work and innovative work to achieve that place. In a nutshell, it is a clear expectation that can lead you to take action. Realistic goals are far easy to reach and never lead you to frustration, procrastination, or disappointment, but unrealistic goals do it.
Let us see why you should set realistic goals inefficient points
- When you set goals, your plan should inspire you to take action, and only realistic goals help you encourage and take action. It is essential to set realistic goals because only realistic goals are achievable.
- Realistic goals are critical as they destructor all the unrealistic expectations from you. Our expectations help us to create plans. Unrealistic expectations always make you create unrealistic goals. But when you have realistic expectations that don’t hurt others or yourself, you will automatically stick to realistic goals and also take action towards achieving them.
- Realistic goals help you motivate yourself. When you see your goal list, and if those goals are achievable or easy for you to do, it ultimately encourages you to complete them.
- If you want to achieve something, you should be confident about it. And only realistic goals improve your confidence because of how easy it is, and you can complete them only with your skills and abilities. You don’t have to make a very tight schedule for yourself. So ultimately, realistic goals help in improving your confidence.
- Goals should help you in keeping yourself focused. And only realistic goals can keep you focused. Unrealistic goals are always ambiguous, and you don’t define them properly, which makes you unable to concrete them properly. But realistic goals help keep yourself concentrated and help you determine your goals appropriately.
How Can Someone Set Realistic Goals?
From reading all the above points, I know that you have understood how important it is to set realistic goals and shoot away from unrealistic goals. Well, what if I tell you some practical points that help you establish realistic goals and ultimately help you take action. I have listed a few of them down below:
- First and foremost, know about yourself. Your goal should be ultimately customized for yourself, and you don’t need any experts to customize it for you. You can customize your goals absolutely for free, and the main thing you have to do is know yourself. Know Your passion, know how much time you can spend days to achieve that goal, know your priority, understand what you can sacrifice that is acting as a barrier between you and your purpose and understand what you want to achieve and where you want to see yourself in the next five years down the lane.
- And the next and most crucial step is listing down your goals. List down the failures you want to achieve. Go from small and short term goals and write your long term goals. You can write it on a piece of paper and stick it onto your wall where you can see it more often because that helps you motivate yourself to work on it.
- After listing down all your goals, it’s time for you to see if you have all the resources available to work on your destination and what obstacles you face. You need resources like time, evidence, motivation, inspiration, coaching, financing, and support.
- Now you have set your goals and got all the necessary tools, as now you have to reread the plans and look at what you can achieve quickly, and if something is vague in the list, you can strike them out.
- Determine your junctures. Not only setting your goals is essential, but it is also important to note that setting milestones are critical if you are on track. This will help you to see your growth and boost your confidence to achieve more.
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List the Realistic and Unrealistic Goals
Let us see the list of realistic and unrealistic goals.
- Realistic: To earn 1000$ a month
- Unrealistic: To make one million$ month
- Realistic: To lose 2 pounds a month
- Unrealistic: To lose 20 pounds a week
- Realistic: To start a startup and run it successfully
- Unrealistic: To build a billion-dollar business empire within a year
- Realistic: To start running slowly and gradually going to the competition
- Unrealistic: To start running in a marathon and win the cup in a month
- Realistic: To start working more focus and slowly earn a promotion
- Unrealistic: To become an HR manager within two months of joining
Examples of Realistic Goals with rReal-life Examples
Take some free time and enjoy it with your family (family goal)
Ram is very busy with his work, but he wants to spend most of his precious time with his family. He is scared if he can ever spend his time with his family since his kids are growing up and spending time with them is very important as it’s the most crucial time of their life. So he set a goal to finish up his tasks quickly and then spend at least one day a week with his family.
Slowly and gradually coming out from alcohol addiction(addiction-free goal)
Karan is very guilty of his alcohol addiction. He is a very good person, but his alcohol addiction is taking him on a destructive path that he doesn’t want, as it is also ruining his career. He wants to come out of his alcohol addiction very soon. So he decided to take therapy. And according to the therapist’s advice, he decided to live one day free from alcohol. And slowly and gradually start quitting alcohol.
Waking up early(wakeup goal)
Now Sia is very lazy. She is a lazy pant, but her dreams are not. She always wants to become an IAS, and she wants to change her routine. So she started changing her morning wake-up time. She didn’t want to waste the beautiful morning time, so she woke up early and started studying. And she set the alarm an hour before her early wake-up time.
To stay fit(fitness goal)
Avinash is a very stout person. He knows he can’t lose all his fat and weight in a month. He wants to enjoy losing weight and see results gradually, and the process should be healthy. So he decided to hit the gym one hour a day instead of setting an unrealistic goal of losing 20 pounds within a week.
Hydration goal
Nisha lacks hydration. She wants to drink more water to flush her blood and make her skin healthy. So she decided to set a time and goal to drink 3 liters of water daily.
Read a book(reading goals)
Anya knows that always watching Netflix and Chill will not benefit her in any way. So she wants to switch to a book. She is not a prolific reader, but she wants to read to improve her creativity and brain. So she set a goal to read one book per month. Daily reading 10 to 15 pages would ultimately help her become a good reader and a better person.
Achieving Promotion(promotion goals)
Instead of setting an unrealistic ideal of taking over the whole department in a day is unrealistic. And Sam doesn’t want that. He wants to enjoy the process. So he slowly and gradually started working hard to get a promotion and salary increment in his office.
Money Goals
Aditya wants to save 1000$ to get his favorite mobile. So he started working part-time after his college and started saving money. Within three months, he achieved his goal and got a brand new mobile.
Learn one skill every week (learning goals)
Robert wants to learn new things and start exploring many things. He doesn’t want to fill his mind with everything at a time. So he picked up an easy course and started learning one skill every week. And then, he started working on each skill and went to depth to know everything about that skill.
Journaling every day ( journal goals)
Asha wants to keep herself a journal. After watching a lot of YouTube videos, she decided to get many journals like goals journals, affirmation journals, gratitude journals, etc., but she gradually understood that so many journals are not needed, and one is more than enough. And thus, she started journaling her daily happenings and stuff in her journal.
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Benefits of Setting Realistic Goals
Setting realistic goals can help you in many ways. The following are some of the importance and benefits of setting realistic goals.
- Setting realistic goals helps you in becoming more disciplined. Yes, when you set goals that are good for your schedule and customize your plans for yourself, you will become more disciplined.
- You will never keep yourself from hydration, food, sleep, and the all-important things you want.
- Your goals give you a transparent focus on what is essential to your life. You will see what is necessary, which can lead you to action. You will see a clear focus on your priority.
- When you set realistic goals, you give yourself a promising future, which can ultimately lead you to control your destiny.
- Setting realistic goals gives you the triggering power to work and take action. It helps you in making a clear decision.
Conclusion
Realistic goals give you a strong motivation and a triggering power to continue doing it to achieve them. Setting realistic goals leads you to take action. Unrealistic goals do not do anything better and make the situations even worse. It won’t even take you to another level because it is complex. When the work is so enormous for you to do, it will only lead you to procrastination, frustration, and disappointment, which you don’t want. I hope I have given enough reasons why you should set realistic goals and avoid unrealistic ones.
Growth and evolution should be gradual, and forcing everything once is too complicated. This can lead you to unwanted issues, including relationship problems, health issues, mental stress, and physical disability. So make sure you are feeding everything gradually and steadily. And that is what can lead you to success and the journey that you should experience with a whole heart. So work hard and share each of your hard work to the core and enter into the gate of success.
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