100 Ways To Motivate Yourself, Third Edition

93. Enlarge your objective

Here is another self-motivator that also must be used as an intellectual tool only. Take a certain goal of yours and double it. Or triple it. Or multiply it by 10. And then ask yourself, quite seriously, what you would have to do to achieve that new goal.

I used this game recently with a friend who holds a position in sales. He came to see me because he was selling $100,000 worth of product each month, the most on his team, and wanted to somehow get to $140,000.

I asked him to tell me what it would take for him to sell $200,000 worth of equipment each month. “$200,000!” he shouted. “That’s impossible. I’m leading the team already with $100,000, and nobody thought that could be done.”

“What would you have to do?” I persisted. ...