Intentional Living and Career Development

Know Your Purpose

The term ‘intentional living’ implies that there is a purpose or dream to be fulfilled. We all have dreams. Some dreams are obviously bigger than others but all deserve acknowledgment and pursuit.

Of course, many dreams don’t get their due pursuit because they are never prioritized properly. Instead, many dreams go unacknowledged as nothing more than fleeting thoughts.

To be clear, the difference between a thought and a dream in this context would be the difference between the statements ‘Oh, it would be nice if…’ and ‘I would lose sleep, my hair, skip meals, or trade oxygen for…’

The difference between the two seems unmistakable but in everyday life thoughts and dreams can easily blend together unless a person intentionally defines their own dreams and marks them as priorities.

Left un-prioritized a person’s aspirations or purpose can elude them and lead to frustration and feelings of defeat.

Simon Sinek, known most for his TED talk, How Great Leaders Inspire Action, concludes from his study of the world’s most groundbreaking companies and public figures that having a purpose to drive all action and decision making is the key attribute of truly inspiring leaders and truly innovative organizations.

Consequently, this common thread has also afforded many of the leaders and organizations in Sinek’s study, most notably Apple, a great deal of commercial success.

When it comes to your career, having a well-defined purpose will have a tremendous impact on your levels of happiness and fulfillment. In order to articulate your true purpose you should write it down as a sort of personal mission statement. The act of writing it out will help you refine your mental process, and when you’ve finished you’ll have something you can return to that keeps you grounded amidst life’s cycle of ups and downs.

You can start living and working intentionally by getting clear on your purpose. I’ve created this free worksheet that will help you to establish priorities for both your life and your career. It will also walk you through the process of writing a professional mission statement you can refer to when making difficult career decisions. [Click Here For Instant Access]

 

 

Define Your Goals

After having defined your purpose, setting goals can help you in taking actionable steps towards fulfilling your chosen purpose.

When talking about goals Zig Ziglar was famous for saying, “If you aim at nothing you are sure to hit it every time.”

Ziglar’s meaning was that without well-defined goals a person’s efforts, professional or otherwise, are bound to be fruitless because they will be random and as a result are likely to conflict with one another, prohibiting any progress at all.

When it comes to setting goals it is important to be specific, that the goal is measurable, and that each goal has a deadline. By adhering to these three principles there should be no mistake as to whether you were successful – or not – in pursuing a goal.

Another important thing to remember when setting goals is your purpose. You may want turn your personal mission statement into a list of questions that serves as a litmus test designed to determine if a particular goal would be a positive step towards fulfilling your chosen purpose.

To make it nearly effortless, I’ve created this free worksheet that walks you through writing you very own specific, measurable, and  time-bound career goals. [Click Here to Download Worksheet for FREE]

 

Create a Professional Development Plan

In growing as a professional and chasing down your career goals there are bound to be new skills that need to be developed or insights that must be learned. In fact, some of your goals may include mastery of new skill sets within a specified timeframe.

In order to ensure timely progress in achieving goals it is wise to commit to writing, the individual steps that needed to be taken in order to achieve each of your goals. Only by creating such a plan will you have the foresight to overcome obstacles that life is certain to throw at you before they can completely derail your career progress.

Learning by working through a plan is proven to work and that is why so many people shell out good money to go to expensive universities and technical schools. In these scenarios the students rely on the plan, or curriculum, of the institution to foster their career development and that is exactly what happens.

Whether or not formal education is always worth the value of its tuition is something plenty of folks, most notably Josh Kaufman, author of The Personal MBA, often question.

There is no doubt that institutions of higher education aid in the development of qualified professionals. The question is, how much of the same knowledge and skill sought through these programs could have been attained through self-study at a much lower cost? And if self-study can yield the same level of competence in aspiring professionals, would the money spent on tuition be better spent on something else?

For some people a formal education may be an appropriate component of their larger professional development plan. That same plan may also include participation in university sponsored clubs, internships, along with a deeper self-study into topics the curriculum of formal education only skims the surface of.

At the same time, plenty of other folks can’t afford the tuition costs of a formal education or to stop working a full-time job. But that doesn’t mean they cannot better their lives and their careers through creating a plan and working it through.

Not only is working a preconceived plan and being clear with what it is you intend to learn, proven to increase your rate of progress, but according Earl Nightingale in his famous recording The Strangest Secret, “If a man is working towards a predetermined goal then he is [already] successful.”

[FREE DOWNLOAD: This free worksheet will walk you through writing you very own specific, measurable, and  time-bound career goals and and action plan for ensuring your future career success. [Click Here to Download Worksheet for FREE]