Deborah R. Brown, MBA, MSW ____________________________________________________________________________

"Keep interested in your own career, however humble; it is a real possession in changing fortunes of time." Max Ehrmann "Desiderata"

When it comes to career success, direction and focus are crucial. But beyond direction, how effective is it to have goals?

Requirements for Effective Goal-Setting

Much has been researched and written about 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 more precise performance than setting "do your best" goals.

Just having goal is not enough. You must develop a strategy to make it happen. What are activities you need to perform everyday? Plan those activities, but also stay alert and open to new ways to achieve your goals as they present themselves.

There are three critical requirements that dictate how well goal setting will work:

 Commitment to your goals.  Periodically reviewing where you stand regarding goal achievement (getting feedback).  Belief that you can achieve your goals (self-confidence and self-efficacy).

You need to genuinely desire 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 also crucial that you believe that you can achieve goals you set for yourself.

Stress and Goal Setting

Goals create striving which results in more 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 eating a healthy diet and exercising regularly, but also not scheduling clients on Fridays. I never work past 8 p.m. I plan vacations and weekends away, and schedule social events with friends at least once per week. Part of my stress management program also involves not over-booking myself with social activities so that I have time to retreat for rest and recuperation.

As I approached graduation from college many years ago, I wrote a poem about goal setting which I titled, "My Brook and I."

I remember brook streaming though woods; spending hours around it, building forts, wiping mud off me with skunk cabbage.

I remember brook on sunny days; Water babbling over stones and rocks, pieces of wood; making water ripple way it did.

I wondered what happened to brook traveling away from my yard. I had a goal for my brook to flow to ocean...but then what?

I see goals for myself thwarted, rearranged, fulfilled. But goal for my brook; What happened to it?

"When you work you are a flute through whose heart whispering of hours turns to music. To love life through labor is to be intimate with life's inmost secret. All work is empty save when there is love, for work is love made visible." Kahlil Gibran

The idea of "right livelihood" originally comes from Buddhism and refers to work that is consciously chosen, performed with full awareness and care and leads to enlightenment. It means we show our love for world through our work and should avoid work that hurts or exploits others. Work provides us with an opportunity to put our beliefs into action.

Conscious Choice

In my consulting practice, I often work with people whose work, through a series of circumstances, has chosen them. Sometimes these career choices seem arbitrary. One person liked a professor he had in college and therefore took up that person's occupation. What many deemed "practical" dictated their direction. Some chose a professional graduate school so they would be qualified to do something, only to realize in their first job that that they do not like work itself. Sadly, career choice is often not inspired from a passion or a particular talent or need of expression.

"We like to think that we have chosen our work, but it could be more accurate to say that our work has found us." Thomas Moore, Care of Soul

A married person with a family sometimes makes career decisions based on what is best for family. Work that does not harm others and supports our family is important. If we find our options are limited while we raise a family, we can be thankful that we have a well-paying job, and can plan for a career change to more fulfilling work when children have left home.

Mindfulness

Right livelihood is also about being present in moment and doing work that needs to be done. I t means concentrating on each task at hand. All parts of work are important, including paperwork many of us would rather not do. It means being willing to do "grunge" work. Mother Teresa said that there is too much preaching and not enough doing. "Take a broom and clean someone's house," she says. "That says enough."