There has been an explosion of coaches everywhere recently. Life coaches, business coaches… We may or may not take them seriously, but there is something we must know. Most, if not all of them, be it famous ones or not-so-famous ones, agree at one valuable point: goals are indispensable. Short-term as well as long-term goals are the key the achieving a more successful life.
What professionals such as Tony Robbins claim is that having goals will provide you with a direction in life. The steps you take will gain value as to whether or not they take you any closer to those goals. If they don’t, the best thing to do would be to evaluate how they can be changed or even left out and substituted for more efficient ones. Robbins, in his books and seminars, constantly tells the story of how he wrote down every single thing he wanted to achieve in life along with the actions he would take to do so – and how he did indeed achieve all of those things.
When it comes to landing that beautiful – and profitable – dream job, setting a long-term goal can certainly direct your actions. If you choose to focus only on the short-term aspects of work and professional development, odds are that you will end up near-sighted. You will only work hard at things that can bring you immediate compensation. Those things are not naturally going to land the dream job. They will keep you alive, pay bills and buy some food, but won’t necessarily satisfy the requisites to get to the top, whatever that can mean to you.
If you do choose to have a long-term goal that is dream-job related, chances are that you will choose different paths. You will not see that ten-month course as a waste of time, since it will give you useful skills. You will spend your money more wisely, viewing it more as an investment than as a necessary evil. You will gain a new perspective of what time means and develop the sense that immediacy is overrated.
There are those who call themselves realistic or, more honestly, pessimistic. They may claim that setting long-term goals is nothing but a recipe to feeling like a failure. Truth be told, it is indeed possible that you won’t achieve every single thing you wish for. That is a reality not only for you, but for everyone else on this planet. However, not achieving something should not be a synonym for failure. It can mean some rethinking is important, some assessing needs to be done, a new plan should be concocted. Great minds’ goals, such as Elon Musk, are not only long term but also ambitious. And if they fail on their way, they find the means to try again, now with improved knowledge from the previously failed experience.
Tony Robbins says that “most people overestimate what they can do in a year, and underestimate what they can do in a decade”. That is the real recipe for failure: seeing time as a factor of stress and pressure instead of an ally. By giving yourself a grand goal and a good amount of time to do it – such as landing the dream job in five to ten years -, you are being more realistic than you would be by either giving up altogether or trying to do it impossibly quickly.
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