I help leaders perform under pressure because I’ve studied it academically, lived it physically, and applied it organisationally.
Chasing outrageous goals represents a fundamental paradox. On the one hand, traditional management literature and psychological frameworks emphasize the necessity of "SMART" goals as the primary mechanism for maintaining motivation and ensuring organizational or personal stability. On the other hand, the most transformative milestones in human history, such as the colonisation of space or the shattering of endurance records, were never remotely achievable or realistic.
I have first hand experience of this from my attempts at breaking the Land’s End to John O’Groats (LEJOG) tandem cycling record. After two failed attempts, In 2015, along with Charlie Mitchell and an amazing support team, we completed the 842-mile journey in 45 hours, 11 minutes, knocking over five hours off a record that had stood since 1966. Success for me came at the age of 45. The previous 49 years of history suggested the task was near-impossible as a number of Olympians had tried and failed and I was most definitely not of the calibre of an olympic athlete. I had no right to think I could break this record.
Over the years I have witnessed many CEOs place what can only be considered unreasonable and unrealistic demands on employees to achieve results that have eluded so many people before them. Employees are asked to suspend disbelief that the targets are impossible or ridiculous and instead to hold a belief that they can be achieved. Whilst such goal setting can seem nonsensical, history shows it can work.
Let’s try and figure out what’s going on.
The value of illusion
A strictly accurate perception of the world is often a hindrance to extreme achievement. Taylor and Brown (1988) challenged the long-held psychological belief that mental health requires a truthful view of reality. They proposed that "positive illusions", including unrealistically positive self-evaluations, an exaggerated sense of control, and unrealistic optimism are actually hallmarks of high-functioning individuals.
In the context of an "impossible" goal, the "optimal margin of illusion" is the specific degree of bias that facilitates performance without leading to dysfunctional risk-taking. If a person only believed in what they could routinely do, they would rarely fail, but they would also never mount the extra effort needed to surpass ordinary performance. Holding the belief that one will prevail against the evidence requires a moderate level of illusion that mollifies the effects of stressful events, allowing the performer to maintain a healthy trajectory of productive functioning even when the data suggests they should quit. In my case, the data after my two failed attempts on the LEJOG tandem record clearly pointed towards giving up, but my “positive illusion” helped me maintain a brief that I could do it. The nuance is that a positive illusion does not mean one is being delusional.
The architecture of aspiration
The psychological journey toward an impossible goal begins with the construction of self-efficacy. Bandura (1977, 1997) defined self-efficacy not as a measure of actual skill, but as a judgment of what one can do with those skills under specific, often adverse, conditions. In high-stakes environments, self-efficacy acts as the primary driver of action. Without the belief that one can produce a desired effect, there is little incentive to act. Self-efficacy functions through a mechanism of "reciprocal causation," where an individual’s beliefs about their capability influence their effort and persistence, which in turn provides data to refine those very beliefs. You’d think my two failed attempts ought to have diminished my self-efficacy. But Bandura (1997) argues that the most resilient efficacy is built through overcoming obstacles. In my case, my two failures could be viewed as valuable learning experiences (although they felt very much like failure at the time).
Neurohacking through Visualization and Foresight
One of the most effective ways to hold onto a belief in success is to feed the brain "evidence" of that success before it happens. Visualisation and mental imagery are not merely "positive thinking"; they are tools for neuromuscular priming. By repeatedly visualizing a specific technical skill or the act of pushing through the final miles of a record attempt, the athlete strengthens the neural blueprint for that movement. I spent hours riding an indoor bike forcing myself through unbelievably hard training sessions and what got me through those was imagining myself crossing the finishing line in John O’Groats and the imagined sensation of what it would feel like to be a record breaker.
When the physical body encounters the predicted crisis the brain "recognises" the pattern from its visualised training. This recognition reduces the perceived "threat" enabling a continuation of performance where without, others might have given up. Research suggests that expert athletes demonstrate superior "anticipatory skills," reading advance cues in the environment to enable them to anticipate what’s going to happen rather than simply reacting to it. Anticipation "trumps reaction" because it slows down the game, reducing the cognitive load on the prefrontal executive-control networks that handle decision-making under pressure.
In the same way visualizing the things that could go wrong whilst trying to achieve an outrageous business target enables early recognition of the warning signs enabling mitigating steps to be implemented earlier.
The absurdity of impossible goals
The myth of Sisyphus, condemned to roll a boulder up a mountain for eternity only to watch it roll back down, is the ultimate allegory for the "ridiculously hard challenge". Albert Camus argues that Sisyphus is "superior to his destiny" because he is conscious of the absurdity of his task yet chooses to continue. The rebellion against the task’s meaningless or impossible nature is where the individual finds freedom and agency. In my case, two failed attempts were incredibly liberating. The expectation that I was going to fail provided me the freedom to experiment and try all sorts of different approaches liberated by the knowledge that I had nothing to lose because no-one really believed I was going to do it. Success is found not in the final destination, but in the struggle itself towards achieving new heights.
Historical data becomes less relevant when one stops assuming the future will be a replication of the past and instead you recognise that this is a unique moment in time. The specific combination of individual, team, technology and will at this moment in time has never existed before, and as a result a different future may be possible.
I am the goal
Audacious goals work best when they are internalised as a core identity rather than just a target. Companies like SpaceX and Tesla succeed with impossible goals because their employees view the colonisation of Mars or the energy transition as identity-defining missions. This identity-based motivation enables teams to reframe setbacks as proof of the mission's importance rather than proof of its impossibility. However, you do need to experience some success to maintain motivation. This is where breaking a decade-long audacious goal into micro-goals provides constant dopaminergic rewards. The more of these small successes that can be experienced the better, whether that is the satisfaction of completing a particularly demanding training session, or migrating customers onto a new IT system. Every success is something to celebrate and draw energy from.
Maintaining belief when it’s going wrong
How do we physically and mentally hold the belief in success when the evidence is negative? The answer lies in Leon Festinger’s Theory of Cognitive Dissonance (1957). Dissonance is the psychological tension that arises when our thoughts, beliefs, or behaviours are inconsistent. When an athlete or leader is faced with clear evidence that they will not prevail, they experience a cognitive crisis. The brain has an innate powerful urge for dissonance reduction. To resolve the discomfort, individuals typically do one of three things: change their behaviour, change their belief, or justify the behaviour by adding new consonant information.
In the heat of a record attempt, when the body is screaming to stop, the easiest way to reduce dissonance is to change the belief, to decide that the goal was unrealistic and quit. To prevent this, the high-stakes performer must ensure that their identity as someone who succeeds is so strong that quitting would create more dissonance than continuing. In my case the thought of having to tell people ‘I gave up’ felt far more uncomfortable than the physical and mental pain experienced during the ride.
Making a habit of it
A significant barrier to maintaining belief is the "Hot-Cold Empathy Gap," a phenomenon where we fail to appreciate how our state (e.g., hungry, tired, in pain) will affect our decisions. In a "cold" state (sitting in an office planning a project), we set audacious goals believing we have the willpower to achieve them. However, in a "hot" state (in my case at 3 AM on a rain-slicked road in Scotland), we default to our habits, both good and bad, because we lack the "bandwidth" for vigilant change. Successful challengers of the impossible account for this gap by building "autonomous systems" and "checklists" that do the thinking for them when they are in the hot state. These habits might be really simple things like always making sure that at the start of every meeting the purpose is clear, the right people are there and the pre-work has been read. A simple habit like this can prevent significant wasted time on pointless meetings.
Successful challengers also rely on "trusted advisors" and "trusted teams" who are in a different state and can provide a "cold" analysis when the performer is losing their grip on the goal. In my case, we agreed even before we started on our final attempt on the LEJOG tandem record the conditions under which the support team could call ‘time’ on the attempt. We knew that in the highly emotional state of wanting to break a record there was a likelihood we would take some stupid risks.
The Eureka Myth
Popular accounts of "impossible" goals often rely on the "Eureka Myth"—the idea that success comes from a single moment of inspiration (like the apple falling on Newton's head). This myth ignores the years of hard work that went on before and the work that followed. Holding the belief that one will prevail is not about waiting for a flash of brilliance; it is about the relentless determination to persist in the face of a seemingly never ending task. It’s about keeping going when there is no light at the end of the tunnel, or what the Finnish people call ‘sisu’. Success is a function of both bias and experience. While the "optimistic bias" gets us to the starting line, it is the deliberate practice and systematic refinement of skills that keeps us in the game. The LEJOG record was not for want of trying over several years, involving an amazing blend of euphoria, fatigue, and camaraderie that was built day-by-day, failure-by-failure.
And in practice this means what?
For those currently facing their own outrageous challenge, the research suggests a specific sequence of mental and organisational actions:
- Select an audacious goal: Choose a goal that is transformational and identity-defining, rather than merely incremental.
- Harness positive illusions: Allow yourself some unrealistic optimism to get past the initial "logic" of failure.
- Build a vulnerable team: Create a culture where honesty is valued over the appearance of strength, ensuring that "uncomfortable truths" are addressed before they become record-ending catastrophes.
- Break it down: Break the "impossible" into "micro-goals" to maintain dopaminergic stimulation and prevent the "existential despair" of the long journey.
- Maintain belief: If you don’t - no one will!