One of my clients was looking for work.
He posted his resume to Monster, ZipRecruiter, Upwork and probably a half-dozen other places. He received some calls as a result, but he didn’t get hired.
At that point, I told him he had a choice. He advertised that he was available for work. So he could sit back and wait for someone to choose him, or he could keep working to make himself a better candidate.
He chose the latter.
Rather than letting his posted resume be the final word on what he was capable of, he started taking classes to earn certifications in the field he wanted to work in. Rather than letting his documented experience stand, he took on freelance work to build his portfolio and experience. Rather than just hope for any job, he studied companies that hired professionals like him and made himself more familiar with their business goals and models.
When he finally received a call from one of these companies, he showed up-to-date training, a self-starting attitude, and recent clients for whom he solved business challenges. And he knew the business he interviewed in so well he could talk about the company with knowledge and insight that demonstrated he had ideas that could be immediately valuable.
He got that job.
This client of mine is a great example of one success principle that gets missed too often:
You don’t get results from focusing on results. You get results from focusing on the actions that produce results.
Stating goals is good. Stating goals is essential. But too often we treat goal achievement like there are only two steps to the process:
1. State goal.
2. Achieve goal.
This overlooks the action, the commitment and the work that exists between those two points.
State your goal. You need to do that to clarify what you’re working toward. That’s your destination, just like you have a destination when you head out on a road trip.
But once you state your goal, don’t focus on the end. Focus on the steps between where you are and where you want to be.
Focus on the next small step you need to accomplish and then the one after that. Sometimes larger goals are so intimidating it stops people before they even start. So chop your goals into mini manageable goals and actions that are necessary to reach the final goal.
One step at a time is key.
Then get up every day and work on those things. Commit to doing the actions that get you the outcome you want. Your goal is your dream. You turn that dream into reality by first turning that dream into action.