If Your Dreams Don’t Scare You, They’re Not Big Enough

January 7, 2025

by Stephen T. Messenger

“The size of your dreams must always exceed your current capacity to achieve them. If your dreams do not scare you, they are not big enough.” — Ellen Johnson Sirleaf

Every year in January, much to my wife’s chagrin, I outline a list of twenty personal, audacious goals that I want to accomplish by next December. These objectives require a significant level of motivation to achieve. At a minimum, they involve a deliberate and sustained effort over time.

This year’s list is much more focused than it has been in the past. What I’ve been missing was an overarching theme which guides my daily interactions with others. I again compiled a list across the domains of the Army’s Holistic Health and Fitness (H2F) Program. This includes mental, physical, spiritual, nutritional, and sleep domains. I’ve also added financial and encouragement categories along with a bonus area for fun family trips.

But the theme of this year is “Lift Others Up.” I’d like to leverage my personal goals to encourage others and be their biggest fan. Everyone needs a cheerleader, and I know that I can do a better job of encouraging others to reach their goals.

As I put the finishing touches on this year’s list, I usually felt the satisfaction of challenging myself along with the immediate stress of having to meet these goals over the next twelve months. However, this year is a bit different. With the thematic goal of lifting others up, it’s less about achieving my own goals and more about working towards them to benefit others.  

Goal Setting

Goal setting is a fundamental tenant of leadership. If we have no idea where we’re going, we’re never going to get there. However, these audacious, personal goals help mold us into a more holistic leader at work along with improving as an individual, husband, and parent at home.

This year, I’ve divided the personal goals into the five domains of H2F and two additional categories of finance and encouragement.

1. Mental helps us think broader and more deeply, building mental capacity over time.
2. Physical is geared towards training our body to deal with the stressors of life.
3. Spiritual focuses on staying in touch with God to build faith and resiliency.
4. Nutritional creates the greatest challenge with defining tangible ways to improve our body’s fuel.
5. Sleep is about daily rest and recharge
6. Finance is working towards building generational wealth for our families.
7. Finally, encourage—the theme of this year—helps us build up those closest to us and foster growth in others.

To be clear, none of these goals are work related; they’re all personal achievements. Work goals stay in the office where they belong. I also like to throw in a bonus category to challenge ourselves to get out into the world with our families and see something new.

Big, Hairy Audacious Goals (BHAG)

Our goals must be bold and audacious. Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was the first female elected head of state in Africa. As a young woman, she repeatedly questioned Liberia’s ability and desire to stand up for equality, and she set a goal to solve this problem.

Along her journey, she faced prison, death threats, and exile. Yet she never gave up on her dream to improve the nation in the face of naysayers and setbacks.

Along the way, she graduated from Harvard, participated in numerous levels of government, won the presidency, and ultimately earned the Nobel Peace Prize. Her goals in life were always larger than what was possible and fraught with peril. Audacious goal setting is a scary journey to embark on but one that bears incredible success.   

Resourcing Our Goals

Our annual goals can’t compare to President Sirleaf’s, but collectively they provide a roadmap to improving life mentally, physically, spiritually, nutritionally, and sleep-wise. It also protects our finances and encourages us to lift others up. It provides focus and forces us to invest time and energy to collectively make us and those around us better.

Once we determine what our goals are, we can efficiently use our resources to attack those priorities. We can plan our year and ensure we’re not wasting the precious commodity of time, but instead harnessing the power of the calendar.

A personal goals list will not get us promoted or earn a better paycheck in itself; it will make us a better leader and direct our focus. After doing this for a number of years, I can guarantee by focusing on goals, we’ll see sustained growth in multiple areas and achieve more than we thought was possible. Over time, our capacity will grow across a wide range of skillsets as we seek to be more than we could ask or imagine.

Without this mindset, the Cheshire Cat from Alice in Wonderland said it best. “If you don’t know where you’re going, any road’ll get you there.”

It’s the Journey, Not the Destination

One note: rarely do I achieve every task on the list. However, the energy put into working towards these goals bears tangible benefits in many other areas. For example, three years in a row I had the goal to finish a doctorate. The dissertation blew up that dream and extended it almost 24 months more than I wanted.

While I didn’t achieve the original timeline which was optimistic at best, I was forced to work on it and complete it still is what I understand is a below average amount of time. A task strived for and not completed still bears great fruit. Oftentimes it is the journey, not the destination.

Goal setting is hard. Great leaders pick goals to improve their personal habits, which leads to gains across the spectrum of leadership. This year, I challenge us to select some bold and audacious goals. We’ll see benefits over time as we steadily work towards accomplishing more than we thought possible.

Lift Others Up

Finally, work this year on lifting others up. The more we can make it about other people and the less we can make it about ourselves, the better influence we have on the world!

This is your year!  Leaders read, think, discuss, and write about leadership.  Your first step should be to sign up for The Maximum Standard’s weekly email where you’ll get a leadership vignette delivered for free every Tuesday morning!  This could also be your year to get published in the Maximum Standard—we’re always looking for authors.  Lead well this year!  

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