Self-Improvement

How Aiming Higher Betters Your Chances of Success

There is no doubt that high achievers often set the bar high. They do their best to be at the top and aim for the highest.

However, this mindset has recently come under much scrutiny. I have seen many self-improvement articles encouraging people to be realistic with their goals and not aim too high. After all, we can not all be superstars, and you could end up disappointed.

I agree that our goals should be as realistic as possible, but we are also known for underestimating ourselves. Many of the things we believe we can not get through are the very same things we conquer that make us stronger.

We are also bad at predicting things. I am not sure about you, but I am sure your life has not worked out as perfectly as you predicted it would when you were younger. And as we age, we learn to become more flexible and less dependent on our predictions of how our lives will plan out.

This point is important because faulty predictions often lead us to underestimate our potential. As short-term thinkers, we are better at predicting things in the present. I can tell you where I will probably be 6–12 months from now, but beyond that, it gets tricky.

The same goes for our potential. At the moment, we may feel as though we will never be able to amount to higher levels, but that is not true for the long term. So, I am still a believer in aiming higher to better your chances of success.

However, it does need to be done correctly. And in this article, I will explain how.

Why Aim Higher?

A lot of the time, we tell people to aim higher without any justification. The first reason that comes to mind is that it allows you to just miss your goals and still be successful. My mother always used to tell me that if you aim for a higher grade, you will still have a good one if you get lower.

Although there is some truth to this, I do not think it is consistent with our everyday lives. Things like starting a company or applying for a dream job are one-time opportunities. Your company’s idea either succeeds or fails, and the same is true for your job application.

So, aiming higher does not provide you with a safety net in these situations. If you fail, you do not get a reward at the end that is still respectable. Unfortunately, you miss your chance and must move on. So, what is the real reason for aiming higher?

In the book The Prince by Niccolò Machiavelli, he uses a wonderful analogy to show why aiming higher is beneficial. For an archer further away from their target, they must aim higher. It allows them to get the projection needed to travel a further distance. And this is the very reason why you should aim higher.

For many of us, success does not come in an instant. Instead, it is a long journey that is quite far away from our current position. Like the archer, aiming higher is beneficial because we can get further.

When we aim for higher levels of success, we approach our success differently. We go the extra mile and put in the work required for the level above that which would make us happy.

By doing so, we build qualities and learn things that we may not have. And all these things equip us to go further than our intended goal to help us get to where we want to be.

Aiming Higher in Practice

I thought it would be good to write a short section within this article to show how aiming higher is applied all around us. Aiming higher not only allows us to obtain success, but it also brings us safety and reliability.

Aircraft are not designed to just about meet the requirements needed for safe travel. Aircraft are designed to travel further than expected and go under much more damage than expected. Engineers design systems to ensure reliability and robustness.

If people want to feel safe driving in their cars and flying on aircraft, they do not want to know that it can just about make it. We are more likely to get on a plane that only fails once in one million flights than once in one hundred flights. And an Aircraft over the time of its life, should not be doing one million flights. However, that is what Aircraft designers set their reliability figures to in some instances.

They aim higher to ensure that we are all guaranteed safety. And our success is like this. We should not seek to do the bare minimum. Instead, we should aim higher to push ourselves and obtain qualities and skills that can push us to where we want to be.

Aiming Higher with Caution

Although I am still a big fan of aiming higher, the concerns from other self-improvement authors are real concerns. Aiming higher can lead to much stress and can often cause us to feel disappointed If we do not amount to what we wanted.

So, we must do our best to have a balanced approach to aiming higher, and that starts with us understanding the reason for doing so. A lot of us aim higher without any reason for doing so. We believe that it will bring more happiness if we obtain it to that level. However, that is not always true.

For the most part, a lot of the happiness that comes from our success is defined by us. Therefore, when aiming higher, do not do it from the perspective of others.

If you are starting a small tech company, becoming the next Microsoft or Apple will be difficult to do. And although it seems like the right thing to aim for, think about your purpose and goals.

For a lot of us, we do not need to impact millions of people all other the globe to be happy. And we do not need to read tonnes of books to feel productive. Aiming higher is relative for everyone, and it must come from you.

I have found that my goals have often been influenced by my teachers, parents, or others in my life. When we aim higher for these reasons, we will find ourselves stressed and disappointed for most of our journey. However, when we aim higher for our own ambition, our aiming higher becomes more effective and is driven by us.

Closing Thoughts

So, aiming higher betters your chances for success, not because you can fail well. Instead, it is because you can go further.

However, going further must be motivated by you and not external things. If not, you will find yourself struggling to get further because the pursuit of a higher goal is not coming from you.

Therefore, aim higher not because others tell you but because you want to. And aim higher not because you can fail better, but because you can propel yourself further.

Finally, aim higher not because of societal expectations, but for the expectations, you have for yourself.

Reader’s Also Like:

You never have to miss another great read from me again. By subscribing to my blog here, you can be notified of my five best-performing articles every month through my newsletter.

If you are an external reader, consider becoming a member to gain access to all my writing. By doing so, you support me and thousands of other writers trying to make the world a better place through their call to write.