The first question is What Do You Want?
Before we get into it, I recently reflected on how many people in our lives ask us what we want rather than tell us what they want.
I have a pretty good recall of my parents having expectations that were to guide my behavior. I think teachers and then bosses usually led with what they expected.
Our mates also have expectations of what they want and may leave it up to us to say what we want. My good male friends who have been married for 30+ years say they absolutely do what their wives say.
So, now it’s your turn. What is it you want?
As a manager that received 6 figure salaries a number of times, I found that owners and my salespeople were happy with me because of one fact. I worked to deliver what they wanted. My superiors wanted happy people and good production. My salespeople wanted to be successful and have support.
It made sense that to satisfy both, I had to support my salespeople in becoming successful. How did I do that? The first principal was I had a personal relationship with each one. We had regular sessions on their goals and their progress in a personal manner, not me setting the expectation. Because I frequently had 70 to 120 salespeople (residential real estate) my calendar always had agent meetings scheduled.
I had to listen and give feedback. I left it to them to do what I suggested would make them more successful. I had been successful and understood there were just a few things that had to be done consistently to develop a clientele.
The same principals occur in the lives of wealthy people. The book Think and Grow Rich were Andrew Carnegie’s lessons for Napoleon Hill on how to become successful. The book has been lauded for decades.
Deciding what you want can be in the many areas important to you. How do you want to feel each day? What kind of relationships do you want? What kind of work do you want to be doing? How do you get the support you need? Who are the people that can help you progress? What are you doing to improve who you are? Who knows about your Career goals and what are they doing to help you achieve them?
Donald Miller is an expert marketer and has a background as a writer and creator of screen plays. He has studied movie plots. He says there are the same plots in all successful stories. The hero has a challenge and doesn’t know if he is up to it. He finds a guide that helps him through difficult times. He achieves his goal and has a new feeling about himself and his life. Sometimes he’s diffusing the bomb or getting the treasure and usually winds up with the girl and starting a new chapter in his life. Its what we want to see and experience at the movies.
It’s what we want to experience in our own lives If we have a growth mindset, we want challenges. We want the excitement of finding out who we are We want to gain respect for what we know and how we help others whether we provide a service, product, art, health, education, or spirituality.
Sometimes we need a guide. We either live by the principals we learned from our parents or other influential people. We have read good books on being successful. We have fallen into a good opportunity where people are working with us to be successful. We have learned from making lots of mistakes, We have a clear picture of what we want and know the steps.
If all of the above are not true for us, maybe it’s time to reflect and get guidance. What do we want? How can we change who we are and how we show up? Do we have the courage to leave our comfort zones? Can we get out of our own head and listen to some new thoughts? Will we make new commitments to get what we want? Are we thinking big enough? Who are our role models? What attracts us to people? Do we live by our own core values? Do we like the person we see in the mirror? Are we consciously getting better every day? Do we have someone we want to keep us accountable? Are we getting back from the world a reflection of what we are putting out? Do we have time frames for getting what we want?
These are some basic questions to help you reflect on how you are living your life and whether it is up to your expectations. Our career influences our personal lives and our personal lives influence our careers. Balance is the often-controversial word for having enough free time and less stress to feel in control. Between our own expectations, those in our career lives and from those who are in our personal lives, we have a lot of balls to juggle.
Having a personal philosophy for how we are going to navigate the ups and downs and twists and turns keeps us steady in the face of the storm. Knowing what we want and having it in alignment with our core values and being able to execute our plan can be comforting at the end of the day.
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#career, #personaldevelopment, #lifepurpose, #goalsetting, #coaching