if your goals are too small, your life will be complicated.
You’ll be doing a hundred things at a mediocre level rather than doing a few things at a high level.
The only way to break this “busy-ness” cycle is to pursue goals so big and seemingly impossible that they force you to simplify things.
I pursue impossible goals every 90 days.
For me, impossible goals are a much better filter than possible goals.
In this article, I will share why.
You’ll learn how having “impossible” goals makes your life:

• Simpler
• Happier
• Easier

You’ll also learn how to truly accomplish the impossible.
You’ll amaze yourself.

1. Impossible Goals Reveal Hidden Treasures

“When the student is ready, the teacher will appear.” — Unknown

You get what you’re looking for. We are all filtering for certain things.
Imagine a street filled with many types of coins. Are you so busy looking for bronze coins that you can’t see the gold coins?
Oftentimes, we miss the gold coins in front of us because we are looking for the bronze.
If you’re not achieving the impossible, it’s likely because you’re not even thinking about it. If you write off your dreams, visions, or ideals, because they’re too “unrealistic,” you won’t be filtering for the ways to get there.
Most people are filtering for what psychologists call the “default future.” This is the future that is most expected if you continue travelling in the same linear path of your current life.
Is that the future you want?
What future do you want?
What are you filtering for?
Here’s a powerful litmus test: you can know what you’re filtering for simply looking at what’s in your life right now.
To shift what you filter for, shift your commitments.
Committing to massive, seemingly impossible goals will trigger your mind to change your filter.
You’ll start looking for evidence that you can achieve your goals.
You’ll start finding solutions that you didn’t see before.
You’ll start finding the relationships you need to accomplish the impossible. You’ll start finding gold coins.
The teacher appears when the student is ready because the teacher has become observable.
The interesting thing is, the opportunities and the people were there the entire time. You were simply filtering to see different things beforehand. You weren’t committed to the impossible, yet.
Commitment to an impossible goal will completely change your life.

“Commitment is a statement of what is…you can know your commitments by your results, not by what you say your commitments are.” — Jim Dethmer, Diana Chapman, and Kaley Warner Klemp
“Without commitment, nothing happens.” — Les Brown
“Once I made a decision, I never thought about it again.” — Michael Jordan
“Once you make a decision, the universe conspires to make it happen.”― Ralph Waldo Emerson
“Until one is committed, there is hesitancy, the chance to draw back, always ineffectiveness. Concerning all acts of initiative (and creation), there is one elementary truth, the ignorance of which kills countless ideas and splendid plans: that the moment one definitely commits oneself, then Providence moves too. All sorts of things occur to help one that would never otherwise have occurred. A whole stream of events issues from the decision, raising in one’s favor all manner of unforeseen incidents and meetings and material assistance, which no man could have dreamt would have come his way.” — William Hutchinson Murray

2. Impossible Goals Filter Out Almost Everything

“10x is so big and seemingly impossible that it immediately forces you out of your current mindset and approach. You can’t work 10x harder or longer. Brute force and linear methods won’t get you to 10x.” — Excerpt from 10x is Easier than 2x

At the same time that you start filtering for the gold coins, you’ll have to weed out all of the bronze coins that were previously cluttering your focus and energy.
This is the core framework of chapter 1 of my third book with entrepreneurial coach Dan Sullivan, 10x is Easier than 2x:
If you’re going for 2x growth, you can keep 80% of what got you here.
You can keep 80% of your existing clients, relationships, habits, and beliefs.
You only need to change 20% of what you’re doing to go 2x, because you’re already well on your way to getting there.
10x, on the other hand, is massive. 10x is seemingly impossible.
Most of what you are doing right now won’t get you to 10x.
10x is such a big filter that 80% of your life needs to change to get you there.
80% of everything you are doing is a distraction to the 20%.
Most people take their present and life and use it to extrapolate a 2x future.
In reality, it is far more realistic and fun to take your desired 10x future and work backwards.
When you create a 10x future, the future becomes your filter for acting in and interpreting the present, rather than your present being the filter for your future.

“Imagination is more important than knowledge.” — Albert Einstein

The bigger your goal, the more intense your filter becomes. 80% of who you think you are is your old self, not your new self.
Most people are scared to go for the impossible because that “80%” is our security blanket. Shedding that blanket opens us up to an entire world of new, and often scary, things.
As an example, when I left on a mission for my church, I had to stop many things that were holding me back.
I had to stop playing World of Warcraft for 15 hours a day.
I had to let go of friends who were negative influences in my life.
I even had to let go of my physical environment and move to a new location.
When you let go of the 80%, it can feel scary. It can feel like you have no support and no foundation. It can feel like you’re cutting loose all of the ties that helped you become successful and like you’ll plummet to the ground without the support of your 80%.
In reality, rather than eliminating the floor, cutting the 80% RAISES your floor.
You’ll ascend to new levels when you cut the 80%.
Nature abhors a vacuum. Your 20% of activities will quickly expand to fill all of your time.
The new standard for how you live, work, and play, will become totally different.
Your floor and your filter are the same thing: your minimum standard of what you find acceptable. When you commit fully to cutting the 80%, you’ll have higher standards.
Don’t be afraid to let go of the security blanket.
You’ve changed before.
In his TED Talk “The Psychology of Your Future Self”, Harvard psychologist Daniel Gilbert said, “Who you are now is as present and fleeting as the present moment.”
You’re not who you were 10 years ago.
You’re not even who you were 10 months ago.
You don’t have to keep holding on to things just because they were useful to your past self.
You can embrace the future with an open mind. You can learn to approach everything with a growth mindset.
You actually seek out failure.
You seek learning.
You enjoy the process.
You love the experience.
You’re curious, not defensive.
You’re flexible, not fragile.
You let go of what got you “here” because you want to get “there.”
This is how you go 10x.
Even huge companies doing hundreds of millions or billions of dollars in revenue have to let go of their past identity.
They have to let go of a lot of what got them here.
Yes, letting go of the 80% can be difficult. Yes, it means letting go of a piece of who you were. However, you can know what you’re committed to by your results. And one of the most powerful things you can do for your life is let go of the things that no longer meet your standard.
When you raise the standard on who you are and on what you do, you no longer say yes to what you used to.
You start saying no to things you used to say yes to.
You raise your entire identity.
You start evolving your psychology.
You start to become your future self.
The 80%, you pass off to other people whose skillsets make those things their 20%.
Or, you simply eliminate them entirely.

3. Impossible Goals Provide Tremendous Clarity

It is a peculiarity of man that he can only live by looking to the future. — Viktor Frankl

As people, we really need a future. In other words, we really need hope.
Hope is a crucial aspect of psychology. When people have no hope, they literally wither.
There’s a lot of research on what hope means, but it really comes down to 3 things:

1. A compelling goal
2. Flexibility
3. Agency

A compelling goal gives you reason and purpose. Purpose is essential to hope.
The second aspect of hope, flexibility, is also known as “pathways” thinking. This is where you are 100% committed to the goal, but flexible on different ways of getting there. Your “why” will continue to guide you through whatever path you ultimately take to reach your destination.

“When the why is strong enough, you will figure out the how.” — Attributed to Bill Walsh

Thomas Edison had pathways thinking. It’s obvious in his mindset and in his hope. He was psychologically flexible on the way to achieving the impossible. He had an extreme amount of hope in achieving his goals.

“I never once failed at making a light bulb. I just found out 99 ways not to make one.” — Thomas A. Edison

The third aspect of hope, or agency thinking, is the belief that you can choose your own goals. It is also the belief that you can and will find the way to achieve those goals.
When you have agency, you believe fully in your own capacity and capability to make decisions.
You know that you can achieve the impossible.
When you have an impossible goal, there are far less pathways of getting there, which paradoxically makes it far easier to find those pathways.
If there are a thousand potential pathways to achieving your goal, that’s very complex and confusing. This makes it hard to actually figure out where you want to go.
Impossible will weed out 80% of the pathways, processes, and people in your life that are holding you back. Because the goal is so high and the goal is the filter, the pathways become very clear.
There are only a select few ways to achieve seemingly impossible goals, and when you find, filter for, and optimize those ways, you start living your life based on quality.
Your relationships start to make a lot more sense.
The people required to help you achieve 10x or impossible goals will be very different from the people that can get you to 2x goals.
If you’re going for 2x goals, you’re probably going to hold on to the same friend groups, mentors, team if you’re an entrepreneur, and other connections.
When you start going for impossible goals, the filter becomes a lot more intense.
In his book The 80/20 Individual, Richard Koch explains there are always just a few people who are the force and factor behind almost all results.
I’ve recently been training a franchise company that’s doing hundreds of millions in revenue, looking to jump to over a billion as fast as possible. One of the lessons they’ve discovered is that to double your business, you really have to find those 20% individuals.
Once you start going for impossible goals, you’ll filter for and find those 20% individuals.
If you want to go 10x and for impossible goals, you have to find those few people that are the best in the world at what they do.
You’ll find people who you don’t have to train. In fact, they’ll train you. If you have to train them, they’re probably the wrong who.
When you raise the bar and go for the impossible, you’ll develop the confidence to start finding and partnering with people who can change your life.
That’s when it’s game over.
That’s when you’re no longer competing with anyone else.
That’s when you start creating dream teams.

4. Impossible Goals Create Abundance

“Going for 10x growth means you must eliminate 80 percent of your existing clients, roles, behaviors, and mindset. 10x requires a full-scale transformation of yourself as well as everyone and everything around you.” — Except from 10x is Easier than 2x

You can start achieving impossible goals once you start really clarifying it.
There are three levels of this.
First, you clarify it, which means you imagine it and you see it.
Level two is to feel it and get emotionally connected to it. This is where you have a why.
Level three is leveraging that why to find the “how.”
In this way, you travel through these phases:
Seeing → Feeling → Knowing
Once you get to a place of knowing, then you start operating fully as your future self.

5. Impossible Goals Simplify Your Life

“Simplicity is the ultimate sophistication.” — Attributed to Leonardo Da Vinci

If you’re going for small goals, chances are your life is very complex. Chances are you’re doing a thousand different things and you’re not doing any of them well.
When you’re going for small goals, you’re caught in the thick of very thin things.
When you start going for impossible goals, you will start operating by faith.
When you start going for impossible goals, you will start filtering for and finding the few pathways and people that have the big upside.
When you start going for impossible goals, you will filter out the 80% of things that you’re holding onto out of psychological security.
This simplifies everything.
It simplifies your focus.
It simplifies your strategy.
It simplifies your attention.
Rather than doing a thousand things mediocre, you do one or two things at a very high level. You hire world-class experts who are really good at what they do to do what you don’t do.

Conclusion

“Try to do the things that you’re incapable of.
If you think you’re unable to work for the best company in its sphere, make that you aim.
If you think you’re incapable of running a company, make that your aim.
If you think you’re unable to be on the cover of Time magazine, make it your business to be there.
Make your vision of where you want to be a reality. Nothing is impossible.”
— Paul Arden

You can achieve the impossible.
I know you can do this.
I can tell you this because I do this on a regular basis.
Your future self could be massively different than you.
You could be 10x better, 10x wealthier, and 10x happier.
You could even reach the impossible in a short period of time because you’re finding and filtering for it.
You’ll happily let go of the things that are holding you back.
You’ll raise the floor.
You’ll go 10x.
Go for impossible.

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(These are tools built on the frameworks from my book Be Your Future Self Now, which was the #1 book in South Korea for 2 weeks)