Outline your career hopes & objectives

“What the mind can conceive and believe, and the heart desire, you can achieve.”

― Norman Vincent Peale

Do you get a feeling that you are like a fragile paper boat moving up and down with the current in a stream? Do you feel that you have no control over your career? Instead of counting on fluke and anticipation, you need to be in command and for that you have to outline your ambitions and intents.

You cannot decide on the mode and methodology of moving ahead in your career unless you are clear of where you seek to be. Most young people, their zeal and fervour to accomplish anything notwithstanding, have no clear-cut response to where they aspire to be. They rejoice if they get a promotion or a raise and think that is what makes a successful career. They do not understand that even they work hard, it is not necessary that they will get a promotion. It is a mistaken belief that after passing out from college, if you get into a job and keep working on it without generating any controversy, your potential will be acknowledged. Nobody ever will pick you out from crowds and facilitate your rise to a megastar status; the initiative has to come from you and you alone. The maiden effort has to be engineered and made by you.

The most important key to attaining career success is the ability to express your career ambition in unambiguous terms. You can start by taking some time off, introspecting and finding honest answers to the following questions:

· When I was a child, what did I aspire to become?

· Today, what are the issues that hold maximum weight and consequence for me and my life?

· What are specific fields of work in which I can acquit myself superbly?

· What are the particular aspects of my work life that I disapprove and have an aversion to?

· Five years down the line, what would I prefer to be engaged in and what all accomplishments will I want to my credit?

· What is my portrayal of a just right and wonderful job?

If you have harboured a dream for the past so many years, let it be today that plant for making it come true. You simply have to reflect on the fact that you are more likely to hit your target when you finally aim at it. So, if you can decide on any particular career aspiration straight away, it is excellent. However, if you are fresh on a post, you can nevertheless hope to gain renown and become a luminary or simply find out the place you want to be at in the coming times.

Whatever be your career aspirations, you must make a record of the same. The next move is to discern your objectives without any ambiguity whatsoever. The objectives that you set for yourself will serve to act as ladder rungs and facilitate reaching your chosen endpoint. The point to be remembered is that the value and usefulness of your objectives are contingent on their excellence and superiority.

What are the inherent attributes of any objective? First and foremost, your objectives should be definite, in that they should be unambiguous and comprehensive. Secondly, they should be quantifiable; your objectives should invariably generate an explicit result based on which you can gauge your advancement. It is also essential that your objectives be achievable; by being achievable, it implies that you should be able to draw yourself out but without being irrational. Your objectives should also be pertinent and germane with every one of them having a purpose and implication for you. Last but not the least, your objectives should have a time-frame, in that the time for start and completion should be clearly enunciated.

Objectives are nothing but the fuel in the furnace of attainment. If you do not set any objectives for yourself, you are bound to get bizarrely dedicated to executing everyday run-of-the mill minutiae that eventually you will become subjugated by them. The bottom line is to cherish your objectives and never lose sight of them because they are a part and parcel of you and your career. You should know what you want to do and hold that thought rather resolutely close to your heart. And do on a regular basis whatever is required to be done. If you treat your objectives in such a manner, every single nightfall will see you that much closer to them, provided you align all your resources, endeavours and focus in the same direction.