Sharing your dreams and goals with other people around you might sound like a great idea, but is it always a great idea?
The answer to this question is not as straightforward, and that is why I decided to write an article about the pros and cons of sharing your life goals with other people around you.
Some people can become very annoying when they are talking about their goals in life, it is not the fact that they are sharing them, but it is more about how they are sharing their goals. There are some clear differences between sharing and bragging, here is an article on that.
Should you share your goals in life with others?
Yes, you should share your goals and dreams in life with other people around you because there are more advantages than disadvantages to that. However, you should be very careful with who you share your dreams, talking about dreams and goals is a very personal discussion that you should have with your close or best friends and some family members but not with everybody out there.
Even if it might sound easy to share your goals with others, it is actually very scary since you expose yourself in a way that not many people are willing to do it.
Also, you must be careful how often and how optimistic you talk about your dreams because it is very easy to be annoying, even for your best friends. They will be supportive of you, but anything has a limit, especially because your dreams are not their dreams as well, so you can’t talk about them over and over again.
I discussed a bit about this in this article about why following your dreams can be selfish.
One more thing is that many people talk about their dreams and goals and do nothing about them, so don’t be surprised if your friends and family act very dismissive in the first phase, they will change their minds when you show them how serious you are about reaching your goals in life. You can’t do this by talking about your dreams. You have to get into action and make steps toward your dreams.
Read Also: How To Stop Copying Others
Pros of sharing your dreams and goals in life
As I said before, if done correctly and not too much, talking about your dreams and goals with others has more and much better pros compared to cons, but if you are not doing it properly, there might be some extra cons.
1. Commitment
Once you share your dreams and goals with other people around you, it makes it much clear that you have to commit to achieving them. You might still end up not reaching them, but at least you have to try it to show them that you are serious about it.
If you talk about your goals and dreams and do nothing about them, your friends and family will be less supportive of you the next time when you talk about your goals.
So just talking about your goals with other people might make you want to do more to achieve them. This is also kind of a disadvantage in certain situations, but we will talk more when we get to the cons.
2. Accountability
This one is related to the first one, but having someone to keep you accountable for what you do in order to reach your goals is crucial when we talk about something that is hard to achieve and takes more time.
Our enthusiasm and optimism might be shaken from time to time, and we can slow down the pace, but having someone to keep us accountable in those moments will help a lot.
3. Support and ideas
If you share your dreams with others, you have better chances of getting support, ideas, and recommendations that will drastically increase your chances of reaching your goals.
You must have realistic expectations and understand that not everybody will be supportive of you when you follow your dreams, and that’s ok. Some of them might not understand why you are following those dreams, some of them might not be interested, and some of them might even envy you, but it is how it is, and you should be prepared for this.
4. Cet you closer
Talking about your dreams and goals with family and friends means that you are opening up to them, which will strengthen your connection. I talked in the article about talking with friends about salary, why talking about what is important for us with other people is essential for having a better relationship with them.
Trying to reach your goal is something that it is constantly on your mind, and you put time and effort toward reaching them, not talking about this with your friends means that you are not talking about a good part of your life. How can a friendship exist without sharing the most important things in your life?
5. People will be more understanding.
People around you that know your goals will understand you when you can’t attend an event or something along this line because you work toward your goals.
If they don’t know that you have something in life that you really want to achieve, they will not be as understanding when you can’t do certain things.
Be careful not to push your friends away or not pay enough attention to them in order to reach your goals. They will be more understanding, but that doesn’t mean that you should ignore them completely.
6. Clarity
While you speak about your goals, they become clearer to you, and your friends and family might help you outline a better and more reliable plan to help you reach your goals.
So this is a double win; you become more aware of your goals and have more points of view.
Read Also: 5 Reasons We Lose Friends As We Get Older
Cons of sharing your dreams and goals in life
Some of those cons are not because you share your dreams and goals in life but rather that you share them with the wrong people or in the wrong way.
1. Getting discouraged
The biggest disadvantage when it comes to sharing your dreams and goals in life is that you will get discouraged because people around you do not see those things as you see them.
Sometimes its because you are way too optimistic, sometimes it is because they don’t believe you are capable of reaching them, or they simply don’t understand the process. You have to understand that they don’t know about your goals and how you can reach them as much as you do.
Also, people who don’t trust themselves will tend to discourage other people around them because they don’t think that some dreams and goals can be reached.
2. You make yourself vulnerable.
Sharing your goals with other people around you is a personal and sensitive topic that can easily be bullying reason or someone taking advantage of that information, especially if you don’t reach those goals. So as I said before, you must be very careful with whom you share your goals to ensure this doesn’t happen.
3. You don’t let it go
We talked about how committed you become to your goals when sharing them with others. That might be bad in some situations where you would not let it go, only to prove to them that you are capable.
There are moments when you learn something new, or you realize that what you want to achieve is not good for you after all, and the best thing that you can do is to let it go and start something else. It is harder to do that if other people know your goals and help you reach them along the way.
However, as I said in the article about being too open-minded, most people change their goals and career more often because they end up at a difficult point rather than because they actually feel like it would be a better way. So make sure that changing your goals or letting the old ones go is actually a good idea.
4. Be annoying to people around you.
Talking about your goals can be very annoying for people around you, and the limit varies from person to person. For some of them you telling them about your goals twice a month might be way too often, and for others might be way too rare and make them feel like you don’t trust them.
Also, how you tell them matters a lot, if you are too obnoxious, there is no need to be insistent on the topic, telling them once might be enough to annoy them.
Yet again, this is not the fault of sharing your goals and dreams but rather how you share them and with whom.
Read Also: The More Successful The Less Friends?
Conclusion
Sharing your dreams and goals in life with other people around you is a good idea that will greatly increase your chances of reaching them if done properly and with the right people.
So, don’t be afraid of sharing them, but at the same time, you should be aware of how you are doing it.
