Happy Memorial Day to my readers in the USA.  I hope you are enjoying the first three day weekend of the summer.

My latest career success coach book, Success Tweets: 140 Bits of Common Sense Career Success Advice, All in 140 Characters or Less is now available on Amazon.com and in bookstores.  I am in the process of blogging about each of the tweets in it. You can get a free copy of Success Tweets at www.SuccessTweets.com.  If you like it, I’d appreciate a positive review on Amazon.com.

Today’s focus is Tweet 31…

Plan how you will achieve your goals.  Then do whatever you have to do, not want or feel like doing, to achieve them.

Your goals won’t get done just because you’ve written them.  Common sense career advice says that 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 that 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 that 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 that 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.

That’s my take on the career advice in Tweet 31 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment sharing your thoughts with us.  As always, thanks for reading.

Bud

Today’s focus is Tweet 30…

Success is a journey, not a destination.  When you accomplish on goal, reach higher and set a new one.

You’ve probably heard of Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – it’s a staple in undergraduate social psychology.  In case you haven’t, or need a refresher, here is a quick recap.  I bring up the Hierarchy of Needs here because it’s related to the career advice in this tweet.

In 1943, Dr. Abraham Maslow wrote a paper called “A Theory of Human Motivation” in which he described his ideas about what motivates humans.  He suggested that human beings have a series of needs which we strive to meet and that the best way to motivate someone is to appeal to the need most relevant to him or her at a given time.  He arranged these needs in a pyramid. 

Physiological, or survival needs like breathing, food, water and sleep are at the base of the pyramid.  Dr. Maslow suggested that until these basic survival needs are met, human beings will not be motivated by any other needs.

Safety and security needs are the next up on the pyramid.  Dr. Maslow suggests that once people feel that they will survive today, they will be motivated by the need to survive tomorrow, the next day and the long term.

Love and belonging needs are next.  Dr. Maslow suggests that once human beings experience a reasonable level of security, their needs turn to developing friendship and family relations.

Esteem needs are next.  Once people feel secure and loved, Dr. Maslow says that they seek gratification that comes from achievement, self respect and the respect of others. 

Self actualization needs are at the top of the pyramid.  Dr. Maslow often described self actualization as “being all that one can be.”  And therefore, one can never be truly self actualized. 

I bring up the Hierarchy of Needs not as a motivational tool, but becasue it has implications for life and career success.  Successful people operate at the top of the pyramid.  They strive to become self actualized. 

Dr. Maslow suggested that self actualization is the pursuit of perfection.  In other words, once you accomplish something that you previously thought of as the pinnacle, you will find that there is more that you can accomplish.  This is in keeping withthe career advice in  Tweet 30 which suggests that becoming self actualized is a process in which you set  new and higher goals whenever you accomplish one of your goals.

That’s why I say that success is a journey, not a destination.  Successful people see themselves as works in progress.  Successful people are never finished becoming all that they can be.  My best career success coach advice suggests that if you want the life and career success you deserve, you need to think of yourself this way — keep becoming more.

I’m not suggesting that you take no time to celebrate your successes and look back at them with pride.  I am saying however, that if you want to build long term career success, you will use your successes as springboards to bigger and better things.

Set new goals.  Develop plans for achieving these new goals.  Work your plans.  And then do it again.  Think of yourself as someone who is “becoming” not as someone who is “complete.”  Successful people realize that there are always new challenges and opportunities.  Some of the best career advice I ever received was from an early mentor who told me to see beyond the horizon, to keep actively looking for new ways to learn, grow and succeed.

The common sense career success coach point here is simple.  Successful people never stop learning and growing.  They follow the advice in Tweet 30 in Success Tweets.  “Success is a journey, not a destination.  When you accomplish one goal, reach higher and set a new one.”  This is the idea embodied in the concept of self actualization; you can never be all that you can be because there will always be new challenges ahead.  Setting and achieving ever increasingly difficult goals is the best way to live a fulfilling life and to create the career success you deserve.  Keep learning, keep growing, keep achieving, and you will succeed beyond your wildest dreams.

That’s my take on Tweet 30 in Success Tweets.  What’s yours?  Please leave a comment.  Tell us about the times you reached beyond what you thought you could accomplish.  Did you fail?  If so, what did you learn?  Did you succeed?  If so, how did you feel?  What did you do next?  As always, thanks for reading, and commenting.  I really appreciate you.

Bud