Home based business owners need to understand the importance of setting realistic goals and then focusing all their efforts to achieve them. Without goals you will not have any way to measure your success. You will be like a ship at sea without a rudder. Without goals you may not be able to achieve targets or assess your potential as an entrepreneur. Goals provide an opportunity to test your skills and business acumen required to run a home based business.At the same time it is extremely important that you need to set goals that are realistic and achievable. Some overenthusiastic individuals set unrealistic business goals that are impossible to attain. They think that if they set unachievable goals that their reputation as serious task master will be built. In most cases, this only leads to failure and serious frustration causing the marketer to lose faith in his/her capabilities. When this happens, generally the marketer gives up on the first try and never tries again.As a person who is running his/her venture from home you must understand that you will have to pay a heavy price for setting unattainable goals. Unattainable goals are like trying to fly to the moon without a space ship. You will never reach your destination. This will cause irreparable damage to your business, your health and your reputation.Unrealistic goals result in business failures:You need to carefully review your goals and if you have set unrealistic business goals for your home based business then you should rework them or be prepared to suffer the consequences as noted below:1. Your business will be preplanned to failure because you had failed to assess your capabilities, Infrastructure, expertise and resources at your disposal. Setting goals without taking into account these factors is a classic plan for failure.2. Your home business venture will be doomed before you ever start if you accept challenges that are beyond your potential.Unrealistic goals can cause your health to suffer:If you are unable to achieve the desired results in your business because of setting goals that are unreachable, your health may suffer due to the frustration and headaches caused by failure. This could have a negative affect on your family as well and potentially cause a separation of the wife and family. No business is worth that cost, so you are well advised to give serious consideration to setting goals that are attainable.Your inability to honor your business commitments due to your unrealistic goals will also affect your self-esteem. Low self-esteem will cause you to become seriously depressed and result in your questioning your own abilities and may cause you to throw in the towel and never try any future business ventures again. This would be a disservice to you and your family because failure on the first try is common and many, many successful business owners have failed at least once before they finally achieved success. The key to having the best opportunity to succeed is to set your goals so that they are achieved in small increments. It’s like eating an elephant, you have to eat it one bite at a time.Failure and depression may even cause you to consider drugs and alcohol as relief from your frustration and failure as a home based business owner if your goals are not met. You may think that you will find solace in the bottle or drugs and feel that they will resolve your possible irrecoverable financial mess. This will further aggravate your health condition. You should never allow this to happen to you.Your reputation could also suffer:Being enthusiastic is essential when starting a new business. However, over-enthusiasm could prove harmful to your business. Over-enthusiasm will cause you to lose sight of your goals and objectives. You need to keep your ear to the ground and pay attention to every detail of your business if you want to succeed. You should do a realistic and objective analysis of your business start up procedures before you commit yourself to any business promise. For example:1. Sometimes you may be lured into committing yourself to accept orders that are impossible to fulfill in a timely manner. You may fail to recognize your business capabilities and agree to deliver services that you may not be able to honor.2. You may have to eat crow if you failed to deliver on schedule because you were overenthusiastic and underestimated your ability to deliver the product as requested. Your reputation as an entrepreneur will suffer and your will lose your customers respect and business because they will not take you seriously.These are just a few of the reasons why it is extremely important for you to understand that if you want to give your business any chance of success at all, that you should never ever set unrealistic goals for your home based business.