On the way to setting and reaching your goals, sometimes you find out that you set your sights too low. As challenging as your goals may have seemed at the time, some of them, even before you cross the finish line, apparently have been well within your grasp all along. Your challenge becomes that of upping the ante, deciding to go for more because you’ve either proven to yourself, or feel in the very marrow of your bones, that you’re capable of achieving more for yourself.

In Good Company

Abraham Lincoln did all he could to win a seat in Congress. He lost far more elections than he ever won. In fact, in 1858, two years before he won the Presidency of the United States, he lost a Senatorial bid in his own state. Obviously, he felt he was up for the challenge of running for an even higher office than the one he had just lost. History proved him to be correct.

More recently, Richard Nixon, who would have won the 1960 presidential election, but lost it because of ballot box stuffing on the part of Democrats (documented before Congress), then went on to lose the 1962 gubernatorial election in California. However, he was triumphant in 1968 and again in 1972 in his bid for President of the United States. Despite his downfall, via Watergate, Nixon won the U.S presidency twice. How many people can say they’ve done that?

Of those with a presidential quest, Ross Perot’s biography reads like someone who continually realized that he needed more of a challenge. Before starting his computer systems company, EDS, which helped make him a billionaire, Perot was a salesman for IBM. As many of his biographies recount, he decided to start his own company around the third week of January, when he had already reached his sales quota at IBM for the entire year.

Hmmm… Maybe I Need a Greater Challenge

So, you ask, when do you decide to make your goals more challenging? The answer isn’t the same for everyone, but there are some common indicators.

When You Reach Your Present Goals at Warp Speed

If you did your gut level best to set challenging but reachable goals that were quantifiable and within specific time frames and you ended up reaching them in a fraction of the time you originally allocated, that’s definitely a clue. I mean, it happens!

When Magic Johnson got into the NBA in the 1979-1980 season, along with many other rookie superstars, he probably had a dream of making the NBA finals and winning a championship or two. Although Magic was the starting point guard for the team, during the championship series when Kareem Abdul-Jabbar had to miss the sixth game in Philadelphia due to injury, Magic filled in at center, scored forty-two points, and turned out to be the series MVP! Thus, when his Laker team won the NBA championship in Magic’s rookie season, one championship wasn’t going to be enough.

As Your Power and Influence Begins to Develop

Ralph Nader took on the entire automobile industry in the early 1960s through the courts and with his best selling book, Unsafe At Any Speed, which documented identifiable and known risks in popular selling automobiles, Nader was rapidly hailed as a consumer advocate.

Early on, Nader learned that one well-developed case intelligently presented in the judicial system is more effective than ten thousand protesters clanging on the fences outside of General Motors. He did not rest on his laurels, however, initiating Public Interest Resource Groups in every state (PIRGs), a national magazine titled Common Cause (in juxtaposition to special interests) and much more.

To this day, he’s been a tireless advocate of environmental protection, safeguarding U.S. jobs, and exposing corporate interests that may run contrary to the needs or wants of society. In many respects, Nader’s entire career has been one of upping the ante to further the progress of causes that he sees a need to support.

When Every Fiber in Your Being Says Move On

Whether you reach chosen goals quickly or experience expanding power and influence, you still may choose to up the ante if a little voice inside you says, “I can do more.” So, even in the absence of evidence in the pursuit of some long-term goal, sometimes you realize on a profound level that it’s time to go back to the drawing board.

There’s always the danger of running into the barrier of biting off more than you can chew. However, if you’ve already racked up a number of significant achievements, have the self- confidence or have otherwise proven to yourself that you do indeed intend to finish what you set out to accomplish, I say, full speed ahead!

Michael Dell, founder of Dell computers, started his company out of his college dormitory room. Many times in his career, still only in his twenties and early thirties, he expanded the company in the absence of what onlookers might call evidence. He upped the ante to the point where, by mid-1997, Dell computers was creating custom systems for customers who ordered via the Internet to the tune of two million dollars in sales per day.

What About You?

In recent memory, have you reached goals that seemed highly challenging at the time in relatively record time? Has your power and influence expanded as you’ve achieved some goals, such that you could set even more challenging ones? Or, do you feel deeply that it simply makes sense for you to move on from where you are? If any one of the factors above is present, that’s significant, and if two or three are present, then follow your heart, not your head. Up your goals. Up the ante.