Career Advice: Dreams Don’t Make Car Payments

You don’t have to be a wiseman to understand that dreams are just dreams unless there is a action strategy to translate them into reality.

Do you know of any person who disagrees with the widespread sense wisdom of setting a final destination and having a strategy for the journey before beginning a trip?

Then why do a lot of of us act as if we can drift along day to day, thinking somehow we can attain our dreams of career success without having creating the effort to have defined personal objectives and plans to reach them? Dreams won’t make the vehicle payments.

Five Excuses For Not Setting Objectives

If you are stymied in setting individual goals, a look at five of the excuses people use when they fail to make plans for their futures need to support.

1. Goals are not essential. Research conducted by Yale University of one of its graduating classes discovered that only 3 percent of graduates had taken all the steps required to set career objectives and plans 10 percent had carried out some of the needed things 87 percent very little or absolutely nothing. A study 20 years later, revealed the three percent had accomplished more than the other 97 percent combined in terms of career positions and financial rewards.

2. Fear. We are afraid that if we set goals and don?t reach them, we will be observed as failures. We are afraid to commit ourselves for fear we will go down the wrong path to a dead end of frustration and unhappiness from which there is no escape. Or we dread the accountability inherent in a stated goal.

three. We believe that is probable to set plans for the future. We tell ourselves, ?There are just too several variables and imponderables in life. Furthermore, people who are productive are just lucky and they “pull’.”

4. We have so a lot of possibilities and can?t determine amongst them. We act like a blind dog in the meat refigerator. But typical sense tells us we can?t have it all. We have to pick a couple of specific objectives and go for them relentlessly. five. We may be paralyzed by the feeling that our hopes are so enormous that they are beyond our reach. We sit there twiddling our thumbs, mesmerized by the feeling that the initial actions is insignificant in view of the size of our dreams and the enormity of it all. It is at this point that we start to think we have objectives when what we actually have are wishes.

Five Ways To Deal With Excuses

There are five actions we can take to exorcise the excuses.

1. Get rid of groundless fear that goals and plans are forever. Neither imposes an irrevocable life sentence. It may possibly seem paradoxical, but very good goals and plans take into account that new circumstances may dictate course modifications along the way. It?s okay to switch objectives, if our notions of success change. But running away from obstacles and the hard work needed to reach goals is not healthy.

2. Define where we are now. What are our qualifications? What are our interests? What drives us? What cost are we willing to pay to reach our objectives.

three. Define in writing the mega-goal we aim to achieve by a certain time in the future, say 3 to five years. It really should be a stretch objective, but not an unrealistic one. The mega-objective can be somewhat broad in nature, but not vague. It has to be much more than ?I want to be rich.? Rather, the goal really should be along the lines of ?I will own my wholesale electronics organization with annual sales of at least million by my 30th birthday. I will live in Metro City, headquarters of my business.”

4. Spell out action actions to reach the mega-objective. Consist of due dates. five. State the anticipated rewards.

Setting goals and reaching them is tough going, but the payoff can make it all worthwhile if you are genuinely hungry for success.

To paraphrase the legendary merchant, J. C. Penney, ?Give me a stock clerk with a objective and I will give you a successful manager. Give me a stock clerk without having a program and I will give you a stock clerk.?