Let’s say you create a really big, sky’s the limit, genuinely audacious vision. It’s so big, in fact, that you’re pretty certain you can’t get there. In other words, you’re going to fail. The flip side: you tailor your vision to what’s feasible, possible, likely, in reach. There’s a great chance you’ll succeed. What would you prefer? Going after goal that you really want but will have a low chance of reaching or going after less than you want but have a greater certainty of attaining?
The fear (one of them, anyway) is that you’ll wind up looking stupid. Think about the football player or coach who confidently declares, “We’re going to make the playoffs.” That guy gets skewered and even if he turns out to be right, or his team does better than expected, he’s still a laughing stock. However, a lot of us–me included–play this out in the privacy of our own minds. We start to create a big vision and then almost immediately start beating a retreat, backing off, worrying about not knowing how, limiting ourselves to what we think we might be able reach instead of what we dream of reaching.
This is part of what I discussed in my conversation with Frode Odegard yesterday (the podcast will be ready shortly). In talking about his Failure Project, we discussed how creating a big vision sets you up for: a) unimagined success and b) failure. What Frode suggested is that highly successful people pursue failure, actively go after it. The trick is to get comfortable with falling short of your goals. The nifty part is by falling short, you wind up far beyond what you imagined you were capable of in the first place.
I’m really intrigued by Frode’s idea: What could you achieve if you stopping chasing success and went after failure instead?
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