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Career, Job, Employment InformationCareer Goals and Stress
by:
Debbie Brown, MSM, MSW
Career Goals and Stress:
How to Attain Goals and Maintain Your Sanity
Deborah R. Brown, MBA, MSW
____________________________________________________________________________
"Keep interested in your own career, however humble;
it is a real possession in the dynamic fortunes of time."
Max Ehrmann
"Desiderata"
When it comes to career success, direction and focus are crucial. But on the far side
direction, how effective is it to have goals?
Requirements for Effective Goal-Setting
Much has been researched and written just about the effectiveness of goal setting.
The findings say that :
Difficult goals lead to higher performance than easy goals.
Difficult goals lead to higher performance than "do your best" goals.
Setting specific goals results in much precise performance than setting "do your best" goals.
Just having the goal is not enough. You must develop a strategy to do it happen. What are the activities you need to perform everyday? Plan those activities, but as well stay alert and open to new route to attain your goals as they present themselves.
There are three critical requirements that dictate how well goal setting wish work:
Commitment to your goals.
Sporadically
reviewing wherever
you stand regarding goal action
(getting feedback).
Belief that you can attain your goals (self-confidence and self-efficacy).
You need to genuinely desire the goals you set. If you don't like your job and don't want to be there, then it is difficult to be committed. It's as well crucial that you believe that you can attain the goals you set for yourself.
Stress and Goal Setting
Goals create attempt which results in much stress. So how do you deal with this stress?
Since I am notoriously poor at pacing myself, I created a structure to help me with this process. My plan includes consumption a healthy diet and effort regularly, but as well not planning
clients on Fridays. I ne'er
activity past 8 p.m. I plan vacations and weekends away, and schedule societal events with friends at least once per week. Part of my stress management program as well involves not over-booking myself with societal activities so that I have time to retreat for rest and recuperation.
As I approached graduation from college many a years ago, I wrote a literary composition just about goal setting which I titled, "My Brook and I."
I remember the brook
streaming tho'
the woods;
spending hours about it,
building forts, wiping the mud off me with skunk cabbage.
I remember the brook on sunny days;
Water babbling over stones and rocks, pieces of wood;
making the water ripple the way it did.
I wondered what happened to the brook
traveling away from my yard.
I had a goal for my brook
to flow to the ocean...but then what?
I see goals for myself
thwarted, rearranged, fulfilled.
But the goal for my brook;
What happened to it?
Deepak Chopra, in The Seven Spiritual Laws of Success, says that if we want to have a eminent career, we should 1st center ourselves and then release our intentions (our career goals) to the universe. We should not be attached to the way these goals develop, or to the exact outcome, but leave the details to the universe. We can get the same results through effort and trying, he says, but the result is stress, which can lead to heart attacks and different physical illnesses.
Sometimes we focus much on our unhappiness with our present situation, than on what we want to achieve. Chopra says that we should accept wherever
we are now, be fully present in the moment and concentrate on our deepest intentions (goals).
Goals should be difficult, but doable with persistent effort. Goals that are too extreme, such as doubling your financial gain
in one year, can only discourage you.
Goals activity because you persist and focus your efforts in a specific direction.
Without that direction, we can find ourselves floating through our lives, much at the mercy of outside forces that are not devoted to our welfare or success. But we can manage our goals in a way that makes not create undo stress by not being attached to the exact way they are achieved.
Having set goals the brook and I
build toward them.
The brook unable to know...
about a pipe in the ground, a leaky marsh, a dam.
Myself not knowing the course I wish follow.
Knowing what I want,
yet finding it hard to grasp.
I remember years of competition, of struggle, of acceptance.
Then discovering what is real, important;
myself, my friends, expression;
a soft kitten purring on my lap;
peace.
Being much than a doctor, a lawyer.
Knowing comfort, relaxation.
Being myself.
Approaching the completion of one goal,
I set new ones.
But fulfilling them means going away, sorrow.
Like the brook moves on, streams to the river...
the ocean.
Saying adios to familiar things,
friends.
Facing a reoccurrence of similar past memories,
painful.
Conclusion
In my business I set performance goals for myself every year. I as well set goals for relationships, finances, home, physical and mental health, as well as spiritual development. I can attest to the fact that the much specific the goal, and the much oft I review that goal and focus on it, the much likely I am to meet that goal. It helps to write down your goals, see through them periodically, visualize them and support a image journal that represents the action
of those goals. But it as well helps to listen to the feedback from the universe, and do adjustments to those goals once
necessary. We should have a career plan, but be flexible with how it unfolds.
I cognize a word...self-fulfillment.
Being vulnerable, can I take chances?
Being strong, grinding ahead through disappointments.
Being weak, belongings go of game goals.
Like a brook who misses the river,
finding another happiness.
Being motivated, seeking what I am after,
But not too aggressive.
Being easy, tension-free.
Making it through the insecurity
Like cool water in a brook;
not knowing what wish come.
Traveling through the seasons of time.
Molding myself to the environment like the brook
makes its path through nature.
Sliding over any obstacles
the brook continues over rocks, pieces of wood.
Freezing in the rough, cold spots;
melting in the warm.
Praying for a map free of dams to follow
in a steady, unchartered progression.
My brook and I.
Simply just about THE AUTHOR
Debbie Brown is a career advisor and executive coach who works primarily with professionla, attorneys and entrepreneurs.
D & B Consulting
3475 Lenox Road, NE
Suite 400
Atlanta, GA 30326
404-240-8063 FAX: 678- 530-0661
www.DandBconsulting.com
Debbie@DandBconsulting.com
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