Reaching is Better Than Succeeding

There is research out there that says we are happiest when we reach our goals 80% of the time. If we didn’t have failure once in a while we wouldn’t be happy with all of our successes. There needs to be a level of difficulty that is the just right amount for us to enjoy reaching for success. The video game industry has learned this over time. They used to make video games that would go on forever. Your only goal was to wrack up as high a score as possible. Then came along the concept of having an ending to a game. That there was a sense of accomplishment. However, there was no fun in the game if it was too easy. Super Mario Brothers is an example of that. Once you memorized the patterns and knew the shortcuts the game became beatable. So eventually games started adding in settings that let you adjust the game from easy, medium to hard. That way you could set the game to the level of your skills. As you got better you would progress from easy to hard and enjoy the game three times over. The same can be said for life. You want to have a job in which you are successful most of the time but are allowed to fail and learn from your mistakes. You may have a goal to be a stock broker. You enjoy the risks and rewards of the job. However, you can’t always win every time, just most of the time. You are excited about the challenge that it gives you. As long as you win more than you lose by a significant margin you’ll be good at your job. So when setting goals don’t always set them to be easy. Set some that make you reach outside of your comfort zone. If you don’t succeed, try and try again.