It sounds great on the back of motivational books but, seriously, sometimes you can’t do it. It’s impossible. Go do something else, put that smile to work where you can actually do some good.
Writer Noah St John makes this point in an article called 5 Impossible Goals You Should Stop Going After, specifically:
Now I know that you’re not used to hearing something like that on a personal growth blog. You’re used to hearing things like, “If you can conceive it, you can achieve it,” and “There’s nothing you can’t do when you set your mind to it.”
That’s all well and good for the majority of the goals we set. However, the truth is that there are some things that you and I actually can’t do.
I often tell my coaching clients that if you continue to go after these impossible goals, you will not only waste your time, money, and effort, you will invariably end up feeling frustrated—not because you didn’t try hard enough, but because you’re going after something you shouldn’t have been going after in the first place.
I like the concept more than I like the rest of his article. The full piece has these five goals he says you should ditch but they’re a bit Hallmark Card Business School-like. I agree about not trying to be perfect all the time, but if you seriously believe you “have to sell 100% of my prospects”, i.e. convince every single person you ever meet that they should buy your particular brand of snake oil, you aren’t listening.