Goals are essential to the process of continuous improvement. Without goals, you are a rudderless ship at the mercy of the current – drifting from one place to the next. Setting proper goals is almost as important as having goals in the first place. Your goals should be realistic and coincide with your value system. If you are four feet tall, for example, wining the Most Valuable Player award in the NBA next year is not a realistic goal for you. Likewise, if you’re an atheist, your goal to become a well known pastor and have the largest congregation in the world doesn't line up with your values. If your goals are not based on who you are, what you believe, and the values you live by, you will achieve undesirable results.
Successful individuals take control of their careers by prioritizing the outcomes they desire and building goals around them. They then find ways to make those goals actionable. The accumulation of these actions over time builds into the achievement of their long-term objectives.
People with Career Intensity distinguish themselves from the rest of the world by the way they view success. A super-achiever does not allow society to determine her worth. Instead, she views success through her own lens – and a unique and specific lens at that. In essence, she sets goals for herself and does not claim victory until she has achieved them. Hers is an all-or-nothing process: either she has reached her goals, or she has not. If she has not yet arrived at the point where she has reached her goal, she simply presses forward. On the surface, this process may appear very simplistic. In reality, it is one of the cornerstones to success. Only you can define your goals. When you do, you should stop at nothing to achieve your dreams.
Judging Your Own Success
A critical lesson to be learned here is that you should be the only judge of your own success. Only you know what the roadmap to your destination looks like. Pretend that you are going on a long journey with some friends. You all start out from the same location. Everyone knows that it will take several days to get to the place you want to go. Everyone knows where that place is, but the friends you are traveling with do not know how to get there. You are the only person who has the map that will help you find your destination. Only you know which landmarks along the way will help keep you on course. How do you think the other travelers feel? Do you think they have blind faith that you will reach your destination? Some of them may, but the majority probably has doubts. They may believe that you have selected a destination that is too far from home or that may require too difficult a journey. They may also feel that you don’t know how to get from point A to point B. You have the map and only you can judge whether or not you are on course.
Time and again I have seen people set standards for others that were far too low, and they ended up shortchanging the potential of the individual. Only you know how much talent, skill, and knowledge you bring to any task that you attempt. Others have no true way of assessing your potential. In addition, only you can gauge your motivation toward achievement. Because no one has access to those aspects of your personality, they can’t judge whether or not you are capable of achieving your goals.
If you allow others to define your successes, they will ultimately define your future. It is crucial that you look at your future through your own lens and that you assess your own effort toward success. It is the only way to control your destiny.
Pursuing Your Obsession
Most successful people describe the pursuit of their goals as an obsession. When I speak to them, they state clearly that their careers began to change course when they focused solely on the achievement of their goals – often to the detriment of other aspects of their lives.
I am not advocating that you take an unhealthy approach toward goal achievement. I’m not telling you to avoid your family and friends and only concentrate on the goals you have outlined for yourself. What I am saying is that, in order to achieve your goals and make your dreams come true, you need to spend as much time as possible working toward them.
You may ask yourself how you can align your daily actives with the goals you have set for yourself. This question is particularly perplexing you’re working with a timeframe that is in the distant future. Time and distance can often distort your perception of reality. In other words, because a goal is set far out into the future, you may have a difficult time believing that it is relevant to what you are doing today.
I often compare this perception of goals to the feeling of traveling in an airplane. When you are at 20,000 feet and you look out of the window of an airplane, you see the buildings of a city. Those buildings appear very small and look like tiny little toys. Your brain has a difficult time comprehending the fact that those buildings are actually several hundred feet tall and may contain thousands of people. As the plane descends and you move closer and closer to the ground, you begin to grasp the size of those buildings. You also begin to realize the magnitude of what has just happened. You have, in fact, just traveled a significant distance in a short time at an altitude that would make a bird nervous. Your mind has a difficult time comprehending concepts that are not local and in perspective.
When talking about their goals, part of the obsession top performers describe is the need to take a single step – no matter how small – each day toward achieving their dreams. Each day, these unique individuals perform at least one action that gives them perspective and moves them closer to their ultimate goals.
