How Setting Lofty Goals Can Lead You To Unbelievable Success

With the power of imagination, there is nothing you set out to do in your life that you won’t be able to achieve. Setting lofty goals leverages your imaginative abilities and pushes you to accomplish something great.

Success begins in your mind, and if you are not limited in your thinking, you’ll always love setting big goals.

“If you can imagine it, you can achieve it. If you can dream it, you can become it.” – William Arthur Ward ^[1]

Many are too scared to set big goals. Perhaps because they don’t want to be disappointed or they feel the bigger things are not meant for them.

In this article, I have highlighted how you can achieve unprecedented success in your life by setting lofty goals.

What Are Lofty Goals?

A lofty goal is a goal that reaches for something big, of a high standard, and often requires great or even overwhelming efforts to accomplish.

Lofty goals are beneficial as they can help you raise your standards and change your status. Lofty goals may sometimes sound beyond reach for the fainthearted, but to the brave, they are the kind of goals that help people to accelerate their success.

When you set lofty goals, your creative juices begin to pump, and your whole being is set in motion to generate ideas on how to accomplish your goals. Accomplishing these goals will give you a feeling of success and a better life than you have ever imagined.

Lofty goals have their own peculiarity. For example, while it is a general rule in goal setting to only set goals that are realistic, lofty goals do not necessarily obey this rule.

This is because lofty goals are based mainly on your imaginative power and your will to accomplish them. Once you can capture these goals in your imagination and have the courage to pursue them, you can achieve them.

Here are some examples of lofty goals:

• Lose 180 pounds in 10 months
• Achieve financial freedom at 40
• Publish an international bestseller
• Climb Mount Everest
• Break an Olympic record
• Reunite with an ex-spouse
• Achieve family harmony
• Beat terminal disease
• Travel to all the countries of the world before you turn 55
• Buy the house of your dreams without debt
• Feed two million homeless people before you die

Dare to Dream Big With Lofty Goals

You can attain unprecedented success in your life if you break out of your cocoon and begin to dream big. Making it a habit to set lofty goals will lead you to dream bigger and bigger.

Never be content with mediocre achievements; you can always reach for something higher, bigger, and better!

To dream big, practice keeping your latest achievements as the benchmarks for the next goals you are aiming to achieve. Move up from one level of success to the next.

3 Steps to Dreaming Big

Get Motivated

Spend time around people with bigger dreams – those who are also succeeding in their own dreams. By being around these kinds of people, your mindset will change and you will see the possibilities in dreaming big dreams too.

Make Dreaming Part of Your To-Do List

Create a specific time and place to dream. Take a pen and a writing pad.

Release yourself into the world of imagination and look broadly at your life: where you are currently, where you ought to be, and how far you really can go if there are no limitations.

Avoid Negative People

It goes without saying that you should also avoid people with a negative attitude. Your motivation can disappear quickly by just having a conversation with a negative person.

Once you have taken these three steps and have written down your dreams (hopefully they are big), begin to set lofty goals towards actualizing them.

10 Important Factors to Achieving Lofty Goals

For your lofty goals to become actualized, you have to really treat them as goals and not just mere wishful thinking. You must have a willingness to pursue them with everything you’ve got.

Here are 10 factors that will give you a clearer picture of your lofty goals and also ensure that you can actualize them:

1. Connect Your Goals to a Bigger Purpose

In order to succeed, let your lofty goals fall in line with the bigger purpose of your life.

Your life should always be directed towards a broader purpose. When your goals connect with this bigger purpose, your approach to reaching these goals will make more sense to you.

2. Make Goals Your Top Priority

If you really want to accomplish your goals, they should become your top priority.

Once you have prioritized them, you will be able to give them the kind of attention they require. Failure to prioritize might lead to focusing more on the “easy” things while you keep procrastinating on actions related to your lofty goals.

What happens in the case of clashing interests, you may ask. There will always be conflicts of interest in life, but when you have made your goal a top priority, you will be able to give it the attention that it deserves.

3. Make Plans That Will Get You There

You have to figure out what it takes to achieve your lofty goals and then put a plan together to achieve them. Planning shows that you believe in your goals, and that you are creating a pathway towards achieving them.

Even if you do not currently have the required resources, you’ve got to plan as if you do. You will be surprised how doing this will allow you to gain fresh energy to pursue your goals.

Besides, you might also begin to see the required resources springing up from unknown places.

“When you want something, the whole universe conspires to make it happen.” – Paulo Coelho ^[2]

4. Make Goals Scalable and Reachable

In your planning, break down the bigger goals into milestones. Instead of working towards achieving the big goal, your mind will be aiming for one milestone at a time.

This makes your goals feel much more within reach and much less less overwhelming.

Accomplishing each milestone will give you the motivation to do more, and you will find that you have accomplished your big goal in no time.

5. Keep It Under Your Hat

Be careful who you tell about your lofty goals. Unless they are trusted accountability partners in achieving your goals, it is advisable not to tell anyone at all, especially when you’re just getting started.

People’s skepticism, pessimism, and discouragement can kill your dream even before it starts.

6. Acknowledge Fears and Confront Them

Accept the challenge of fear and come to terms with it.

Fears are the thoughts about possibilities of failure or the anxieties about not being sure how things are going to turn out. If possible, write down your fears one by one and look for alternative facts for each of them.

Read more about conquering fears: How to Overcome Your Fear and Achieve Greatness

7. Think Only in Terms of Success

Look for more reasons why you will succeed than why you might fail.

While it is useful to consider what can make your goals fail, it’s much better to focus on how you want them to succeed. This requires that you focus only on achieving the goal, and that you become “deaf and dumb” to other voices.

8. Prepare for Opposition

People might tell you that your goals are not feasible. Others might even try to block you from succeeding.

You have to prepare for this ahead of time and be tactical with your goals to defeat opposition. Many successful people have had to prove the skeptics wrong.

You have to be able to silence your opposition and show them that your goal is truly worth pursuing.

9. Plan for Contingencies

There will be unavoidable obstacles along the path to achieving your goals. They do not necessarily mean to stop you, but they arise anyway.

In your planning, be sure to make room for contingencies. Most importantly, decide in advance never to give up on your lofty goals, no matter what challenges you come across.

10. Get Help if Necessary

Learn to ask for help when you need it. Someone out there might be willing to help or to offer a crucial idea that can propel you forwards toward your goal.

You may have seen the viral video depicting a scenario in which a huge tree fell across a major road, causing serious traffic gridlock. A very little boy approached the fallen tree and was trying to push it.

At first, people didn’t take him seriously. But when they saw that he was determined, they joined him in pushing the tree and the road became clear again for everyone. ^[3]

The lesson in this video is that one way or another, when you take the required actions, you will always find someone will support your dream.

Final Thoughts

Lofty goals are essential, and anyone who is determined to have a better life can accomplish them. Do not be content with small- or medium-level achievements.

Make a habit of giving yourself a daunting goal to achieve every time, and you will see yourself stretch towards unprecedented success.

More About Reaching Your Dreams

• 10 Ways to Turn Your Big Dream Into Reality
• 30s Tip: Dream Big and Aim High
• How Setting Personal Goals Makes You a Greater Achiever

Featured photo credit: Clark Tibbs via unsplash.com