Goal Setting

Let me share with you a story. Just a short span of three years ago, my career goal was to retire comfortably in my public housing apartment, not to rock the boat or shake things up. I wanted to be a civil servant and get my pension at the end of it.

Fast forward to three years later, I’m now an entrepreneur and an intrapreneur working from home, as well as a platform speaker helping to bring people into personal development and intraprenuership courses.

I’m going to share with you the three biggest mistakes of setting career goals. The first is not being in the right career in the first place. The second is not knowing your personality and the third is not thinking big enough. Let me elaborate further all on each of the three biggest mistakes.

What do I mean by not being in the right career? In the groundbreaking book known as “Ready, fire, aim” by Michael Masterson, he says that there are actually two types employees, the entrepreneur or the intrapreneur. If you’re able to employ an entrepreneur it means that you have caught the entrepreneur in a very low time in his life and he needs money to tide him over. He will leave in no time. But if you were to employ an intraapreneur, then you are in luck.

What does this mean for you? Discover for yourself, within yourself, who are you? Are you entrepreneur or intrapreneur or simply a civil servant who just wait for his time to be over?

I really hope that you’re not the third option. If you are an entrepreneur, are you setting your career goals on the right track? Do you want to work for somebody else for the rest of your life? Do you want to be compensated fully for your ideas and feel that you should be in full control of your life and given full credit for whatever ideas you put forth?

Are you an intrapreneur who prefers to have the backing of a solid company and allow them to take a big proportion of your credit for your idea but have the security of having a paycheck every month? With that, you would be able to find for yourself what the right career is.

The second biggest mistake is not knowing your personality. In the Myers-Briggs personality test, I found that I am known as an INFP. These terms may confuse you but in simple words it means that I am someone who is idealistic and would work in the personal development field.

Once you know your personality, you can then tailor your career to suit yourself so that when you achieve greatness in your career you’ll feel so aligned with who you are. This would give you so much more job satisfaction.

Setting career goals is not just about finding the career that everybody loves and everybody talks about and being good in it. Setting career goals means knowing what you want, knowing who you are and going full force into achieving what you set out to do.

The third biggest mistake to setting career goals is not thinking big enough. As I said before, three years ago, all I thought about was to retire from my civil service job and lead a comfortable life with the family. But what I didn’t realize is that with the technology of Neuro Linguistic Programming, a very popular success technology, setting career goals for me became a high when I set my goals.

The reason is because I destroyed all by limiting beliefs using the technology of Neuro Linguistic Programming and was able to find for myself what my talent is and what resources were available to me to skyrocket myself to success.

So there you have it, the three biggest mistake of setting career goals. Do not make the same mistake I’ve made three years ago and waste precious time. Know that you are in the right career by finding out for yourself if you’re an entrepreneur or intrapreneur. Know your personality so that when you do achieve greatness, you are aligned with you are. Begin to think big so that when you start setting career goals, you’ll believe that you can achieve greatness and sooner or later, you will begin to achieve it.

Did you know our unconscious mind makes up a huge 95% of our mind? Being the majority shareholder, the unconscious mind will determine the results you get. Conflict often occurs when you consciously think you want something and your unconscious mind has other ideas - mainly because of its past programming based on the experiences you have had through-out your life.

That is why sometimes you may have been motivated to strive for a new goal, small or big, and find yourself almost battling yourself and even self sabotaging. I know I have in the past. It’s because the conscious mind decides on the goal, but the unconscious mind doesn’t believe in it, or one is focusing on the wrong things to get that goal.

Perhaps you feel some kind of inner conflict - like part of me wants this really bad, but part of me doesn’t for whatever reason - it’s too hard, it’s scary, it means I don’t get that other thing I want. Perhaps you want to be an Olympian but part of you also wants to have a good time!! 
It is important to consider where you are focusing your attention and energy? What sort of pictures are you producing in your mind when you think about your goals? What sort of feelings do you get?

Are you getting a clear and brilliant picture of what is you really want? You see our unconscious mind responds to all the pictures and feelings we get whenever we are thinking. Bearing this in mind, then it definitely helps to think positive thoughts, to put these positive pictures, sounds and feelings into our mindset. The mind does not understand the word ‘not’ or ‘don’t’ and only hears what comes after the negative word. When you think about playing sport or achieving results in other aspects of your life, are you thinking about winning? Or are you thinking about not losing - and hence considering the possibility of losing?

Who has ever told themselves “I hope I don’t stuff it up!!”? A key to creating better results in all areas of your life is to start thinking about what you do want, and how you want to show up, how you want to be.

If you are generally motivated by fear, or what you don’t want, it is very difficult to get long lasting change.

So it makes sense to focus positively towards what you want - to create positive pictures in your mind, and to have the right motivation to drive you forward and consistently to your end goal.

Focus can be applied moment by moment, daily and in short and long-term goals.

When challenges arise, become aware of where your focus is. Are you focused on the problem, on what is wrong? It can be more empowering focusing the solution, on what is right, and what can be learnt from a situation. By being continually aware of your own thought processes you can begin to be pro-active in where your attention is directed.

Imagine yourself at training and you’re feeling a little sore, perhaps a bit tired or perhaps you’ve made a few mistakes. If these events take your focus, then you are unable to direct your attention to the important things. A champion has the ability to focus on what they want and on the important things that will lead to improvement and to results.

In the long term, a champion has the ability to maintain focus on the end goal. Distractions may come in different opportunities and the true champion will persist and continue on until that goal is achieved. When you start honing your focus you will be amazed at what you can achieve. Think about what it is your really want and commit to it to create the opportunities that will assure its fulfillment.