Realistic Expectations are nothing but Smart Goals

Photo by Hunter Johnson on Unsplash

Experiment #: 6

It is not uncommon to underestimate, or as most often is the case, overestimate oneself. As I mentioned in my first blog, ‘Perceive the Pattern’, Expecting overnight results is a rarity in any field. So is patience.

True Story: It is my goal to run a marathon one day. But I haven’t yet got to practice running. Every year I think, “this is going to be the year”. I even start practicing but then give up soon enough due to time, work, priorities, and so on. The truth is I see the end objective, get overwhelmed about the 20+ miles and just give up. I just can’t envision myself crossing that finish line.

Having never been a quitter, I have written my goal down now. I WILL RUN A MARATHON. And it is alive. Now have broken it down into smaller achievable time-bound goals. Short term goals of 3 months and long-term goals of 6 months and long-term goals of 1 year.

When I saw the entire marathon as a whole it just didn’t seem realistic. But now, having broken it down, conducting a little SWAT analysis on myself, it seems doable.

I have been practicing for the past few weeks now. Wow! This seems achievable.

I shared this bit of personal struggle to highlight that I have been doing this at work too and it worked. I just didn’t think to apply this to my personal goals.

Sure there are many external factors that will negatively impact me from achieving my goals. But when times are tough, we must find the will to endure.

I have often observed a big disconnect between expectations and reality. And that is, quite literally, a reality check.

I think realistic expectations are nothing but Smart Goals.

We have all had ‘1000 leads from this activity’, ‘20 sales from that list of prospects’, ‘Come back home by mid-night’ expectations are some point in our lives.

And we all knew just how unrealistic they were because they were out of touch with reality.

What is the track record of that activity? Does that list even qualify as prospects? Are you kidding! The party comes alive at midnight?

When we break our end game objective down into smaller goals, it will become doable. Doing a little analysis (or a thorough one) and getting the facts right is just as necessary too.

It is also just as important to celebrate the achievements. It gives us the much-needed push to rock the next goal. I look forward to those special moments of (sometimes private) celebrations when my organic reach achieves a certain percentage, or my audience grows to a certain number. It just makes me happy. Happy, I can achieve much more…..and rock it too.