Make Your Dreams Work

Teaching Career and Life Development to college juniors and seniors is one of my favorite parts of my job.  Growing up I read a story that an actor prayed every night as a child for God to make him an actor. When he grew up, he was an actor.  I don't remember who the actor was but for every night as a child (and sometimes now), I prayed that God would make me an actor, a dancer, and a motivational speaker.  Yes, I asked for three things. An overachiever - I know.  To me, teaching combines two of those requests.  I am a dramatic person (never would have guessed that would you?) so I have a dramatic teaching style. I tell my students that I love the stage and so they are my confined audience two days a week.  They laugh. They are polite.  At the very least, I am entertaining myself!

And God made me a motivational speaker.  To this point in my career, all of my professional positions have been composed of a majority of speaking on personal and professional development.  While I don't command the large paychecks that some speakers get (yet), I do get paid every day to read self help books and apply those principles and theories to develop people into their potential.  I tell my students that I love my job because I have always been that cheesy person who loves the self help section of a book store.  I admit it without shame!  And my job allows me to get to do that every day. 

With all that said, it makes sense that Thursday's class will be about goal setting. Seems elementary for a college age group but after reflection on the topic a few years ago, I realized that all of us know what goal setting is but seldom do we get to take the time out of our busy lives to reflect on the goals.  I thought that my college students would scoff at the idea of goal setting but when I frame it with, "I am giving you the time during this class to understand why you are working so hard in college," they relax into the class.  Many of them have told me they applied the principles.  While I was reviewing it today, I realized that it had been awhile since I had set and reviewed my own goals.  It gets so easy to just fall into the "dailyness" of life without reflecting on why we are doing the things we are doing. So I prepared for the class and reflected on my personal goals.

While I can't invite you to class (every seat is taken at the moment), I encourage you to take an hour or so this week and reflect on why you are working so hard. What are you going for?  I plan on doing the same thing, so I am not a "do as I say, not as I do" kind of teacher and I will be using the following strategies:

The Power of Five
The Power of Five is probably one of the most simplistic yet powerful strategies, that when applied daily will move you consistently toward your goals.  I first learned about The Power of Five in Jack Canfield's Success Principles book (highly recommend).  When Canfield was working on the Chicken Soup for the Soul series, he applied the principle to alleviate feelings of being overwhelmed while steadily moving him and his co-author toward their goals. The Power of Five is simply write down five things each day that you will do that will advance you to the goal.  Basically, it is breaking it down into tiny steps. How large the five steps are each day are dictated by how much time you have.  For example, one of my goals is to finish a book I am working on.  Some days I have time to write five pages, other days I have time to write five paragraphs.  Either way I am making consistent progress forward.

Look Ahead and Plan Backward
I have taught this idea so much that I fail to remember where I first heard it so I apologize for not crediting the original source.  Often when working with people working on professional goals, they disclose to me they are not quite sure what steps to even take.  For some reason, it is quite common for the steps directly in front of us to be dark but the big goal to be clearly visible.  Therefore start with the big goal, even if it is five years ahead and then plan backwards until you get back where you are today.  Some of the details may be a little fuzzy but you have a working outline now.  With this outline, you can figure out your power of five. 

And to use a little inspiration from a picture I pinned on Pinterest: Dreams Don't Work Unless You Do!  

Happy Tuesday y'all!