Goals Are the Foundation of Career Success

Your goals won’t get done just because you’ve written them. Common sense career advice says you have to work your goals. There are two steps here. First plan how you will achieve each of your goals. Second, work your plan. You can have all of the good intentions in the world, but if you don’t plan how you will achieve your goals and then work your plan, you will not achieve the life and career success you want and deserve.

Gary Ryan Blair, The Goals Guy, and author of a great little book called, Everything Counts, makes an important point about the importance of working your goals…

“Good intentions, while honorable, are of little use when you let weeks, months, and years of potential and possibility slip by.”

Gary has a weekly ritual of reflecting, reviewing and updating his goals. He said this ritual has allowed him to continue to grow and make significant performance gains for twelve straight years without missing a beat.

Check it out.

Every Sunday night, or Monday morning, isolate one goal and ask yourself the following five questions:

1. What are my current year to date results in relation to this goal?
2. What has gone right so far this year? Why? Identify strengths and strategies to repeat.
3. What has gone wrong so far this year? Why? Identify weaknesses and strategies to drop.
4. What corrective actions will I immediately implement to remain on target?
5. What will I commit to doing this week to ensure I will meet or achieve this goal?

I love this exercise.  I have committed to doing it every Monday morning. I began today. As a career success coach, I encourage you to do the same. Give this exercise the time and attention it deserves, and as Gary says, “you will have positioned yourself for having a breakthrough week.”

Tweet 31 in Success Tweets provides some no nonsense career success coach advice. It says “do whatever you have to do, not want or feel like doing, to achieve them.” Gary Ryan Blair, the Goals Guy provides a great exercise to help you stay on target and moving ahead toward achieving your goals. Even if you don’t feel like reviewing one of your goals every week, I suggest you do it. This is common sense career advice. The more you focus on your goals, the more likely you are to achieve them.

There is a Japanese proverb I like and is appropriate here…

Vision without action is a daydream. Action with vision is a nightmare.

No matter how big, your goals, plans, thoughts and dreams will never become a reality until you act on them. You have to commit to taking personal responsibility for achieving your goals and for creating the life and career success you want and deserve. And action is the single most important word when it comes to demonstrating your commitment.

On the other hand, action without vision truly is a nightmare. You’ll never get where you want to go if you don’t have a clear idea of exactly what you want to achieve. That’s why you have to set goals. Your goals are your vision for the career success you will create.

Goals give you direction and focus. Action makes your goals a reality.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple. Successful people follow the career advice in Tweet 31 in Success Tweets, “Plan how you will achieve your goals. Then do whatever you have to do, not want or feel like doing, to achieve them.”

Goals are the foundation of your success. You need to do two things to achieve your goals.

First create a plan.

Second, implement your plan; do whatever you have to do to achieve your goals.

Gary Ryan Blair, The Goals Guy, suggests focusing on one of your goals every week. Figure out how well you’re doing on this one goal. Then commit to doing the things necessary to move you closer to achieving it. If you rotate through your goals, one week at a time, you’ll be moving in the right direction. You’ll be on the road to creating the life and career success you want and deserve.

This technique works.

Take it from a career success coach who uses it.

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