What Will Happen if You Succeed?

Sometimes you find yourself with a goal you want to achieve, but you just don’t take the appropriate action to reach it. You aren’t really afraid of failure or rejection, doing nothing will allow you to succeed at failure. The path to the goal seems clear enough and might even be an interesting challenge, and occasionally you’ll make some progress. When you think about moving forward, though, you can’t seem to motivate yourself, and you’re not sure why. This often happens with long-term goals that require intermittent action, like losing weight or transitioning to start a new business and eventually quit your job.

One question I’ve found helpful to ask in these situations is this: What will happen if you succeed? Forget about what you hope will happen or what you fear might happen, but realistically consider what probably will happen. So you achieve your goal. Then what? What else will change? What additional responsibilities will you have? How much of a greater impact will you have on others?