Perhaps you’ve discarded a goal because either you decided it was unattainable or you just couldn’t come up with the plan to achieve it. From an expanded frame of reference, goals that once seemed unreachable, as well as new goals that you may not have ever considered, often seem to be more within your reach. If you can see, hear, taste, and touch objects that signify the attainment of your goals, you’re that much more likely to achieve your goals.

Spreading Yourself Too Thin

The counterpoint to wide-focus goal achievement, is that if you try to take on too much too fast in too many arenas of life, you may over-stress yourself or even reach a stage of burnout.

Unfortunately, contemporary society seems bent on increasing the number of images shown daily of the super mom, the super dad, and the super executive. Such images show up in movies, television shows, print media, and everywhere in-between.

The portrayal of life as it “ought to be” in the post-World War II era started with Norman Rockwell. Norman Rockwell paintings depict an idyllic way of life. Today, models of all varieties flood us with notions about how we’re supposed to look, walk, talk, act, dress and so on.

Even highly educated and respected adults sometimes get caught up in the flood of images and forget some of the basic realities of life. Achieving challenging goals in one arena of life requires sacrifices. Achieving them in many arenas of life requires a balanced approach with relative simplicity, and proceeding incrementally even if that is not the way in which progress is attained.

The term “other-directed,” coined by Dr. David Reisman, describes vast numbers of the American population. Too many people today are caught up in the pursuit of what they merely have been programmed to want. Many will live their entire lives not even realizing it. You need challenges, but they need to be your own challenges, internally chosen for internal reasons.

Taking Calculated Risks

In The Luck Factor, author Max Gunther told us that among the many traits that converge to help you be “lucky,” the ratchet effect is most compelling. The ratchet effect means that if you reach for a goal and fail, rather than losing everything, you fall back to a position, like a ratchet in wrench and socket set, from where you can regroup. Then, in short order, you can resume your campaign.

Benefiting from the Ratchet Effect

The ratchet effect routinely guides top executives at digital game makers such as Nintendo and Sega. Before a new software game is shipped to stores, such companies employ bug catchers. These are people who spend every waking hour trying to find the flaws in a program before it’s distributed.

The great game makers know that to achieve the challenging goal of establishing a large market for the latest innovation in gameware, they need to risk having a bug catcher find anything that might be wrong even if it means scrapping the product buy priligy australia (which rarely happens). In this manner, when the games are ready to ship, the manufacturers have at least some sense of security, for they have done all they could to ensure that their customers will receive a solid product.

One executive at a top game manufacturing company said that when the director of bug catchers calls her, she feels like “hanging herself.” On the other hand, once the game passes the internal tests and is ready to be shipped by the thousand, the company is left with an acceptable, calculated risk. The risks they face now represent those that are normal in the marketplace. Will there be delays in shipping, will customers buy in the numbers projected, or will someone usurp their creation?

Raising the Odds of Reaching Your Goal

Successful risk-takers have almost an ingrained capability for lowering the odds of failure. Dick Rutan flew an amazing 325 combat missions over Vietnam. When he was ready to board the Voyager with fellow pilot Jeana Yeager, although the trip seemed to be fraught with perils, Rutan knew exactly what he was doing.

The aircraft had been tested and tested then tested again. Professor Jefferson Koonce, an expert at human-factors engineering at the University of Massachusetts said, “It wasn’t done blindly. The design was feasible and they climbed on board with fairly high confidence.”

The Risk-taker in You

In your own life, right now, think about the times in which you engaged in appropriate risk-taking. When did you venture way out on a limb, and yet because of your knowledge, experience and background, knew that the odds were pretty good that you’d succeed?

Maybe you decided to take a leadership position in some group even though you had not held one previously. Perhaps you set out to accomplish something and although it seemed as if you had precious little time and resources, you prevailed. Or, maybe you went head-on against stiff competition but nevertheless came out on top.

Take a minute to jot down three times where you engaged in what you consider to be appropriate risk taking in pursuit of some highly challenging yet reachable goal.

In reviewing your brief list, reflect upon the common denominators of these successful risks. For example, did you have a contingency plan? If things started to go badly, would you have been able to shift gears, perhaps follow a different plan, and still have the situation turn out all right?

Did you engage in extensive planning or preparation prior to engaging in the behavior or task? It’s one thing to step into the ring against the heavyweight champ. It’s quite another if you’ve been vigorously training for six months with the world’s top coaches and had already fought successfully with highly skilled and respected sparring partners.

Such reflection on successful risk-taking can help you think about achieving your goals in new, ingenuous ways. Such creativity may lead you to not only meet your goals quicker, but to surpass them by far!