Sharpshooters in the military are trained to always aim high. The earth’s gravitational pull will inevitably win out over the bullet’s forward thrust and drag it towards the ground. So depending on how far the target is from the barrel, the shooter has to work out how much the bullet will drop before it gets there. They’re taught to aim just above the target to get a perfect hit.
Aim above the target
Goal setting can be the same in life. Setting unrealistic goals may not be the worst idea ever. If I tell a client to run one kilometre on the treadmill, they’ll get there and stop immediately – even though they may have had a few hundred more metres in them.
Now, if I tell the same person to run two kilometres and they fail and only make one and a half, to me and to them, that’s still a win. I set the bar higher, they reached for it and fell, but they still did more than I’d originally expected of them. The harder target made them push that little bit harder.
Aim for the stars and maybe you’ll reach the sky.
The same rule works for nutrition
We can apply the same rule to our nutrition. If I tell someone to cut 500 calories from their diet, they’re more than likely to push the boundaries a bit – sneak in a bit of chocolate, or still have the fries with their Big Mac. They know 500 calories isn’t much, so they tell themselves they’ll cut back at the next meal instead (which they never do). Whether they were successful or not, they’ve most likely only taken 500 calories out of their diet, if that.
Now, if I tell that person they need to remove 1,000 calories, even though that’s incredibly unrealistic, they’ll naturally do what they can and aim for it. Chances are they won’t get to 1,000. Perhaps they’ll fall short at 800 or 700, but hey, that’s still better than 500.
The law of effort and pressure
It all comes down to the law of effort and pressure. Watch the 100m and 400m sprints at the Olympics and you’ll see a stark difference in acceleration. The 100m sprinters reach top speed much quicker than the 400m runners. They’ve conditioned themselves to do this: it’s a shorter race with less room for error, so there’s more pressure on them. A 400m sprinter will spend the first 300m keeping pace with the others and only put their foot down over the final 100m to cross the line first.
If one of those 400m sprinters decided to qualify for the 100m at the next Olympics, you’d best believe their acceleration out of the starting blocks would improve dramatically over the coming four years.
Setting unrealistic goals is the cornerstone of any great success story. It’s the idea of giving everything 100 per cent, of giving it your all.
There is, however, a dark side to setting unrealistic goals, which is why it also pays to know when and how to set realistic goals.
