By Markey Read

Are you a goal setter or a goal avoider? Some people write goals for everything and find great joy in achieving them in order to cross them off the list. And others never seem to get around to writing down their goals because they don’t know what to write.

The best part about goals is that if you write them, they are in your handwriting and you can erase them, add to them, or edit them. Your goals are for you – not for anyone else.

Goal setting and achieving, however, is an art form and takes practice to really use goals effectively in your life. To practice writing goals means taking a chance and learning from your failures. For example, if you don’t meet your goal of getting a new job by October 1, 2000, this does not mean you should stop the process and it does not mean that you failed. If you keep steadily moving toward your goal of finding new work, you will eventually meet your goal. You simply need to be willing to maintain your focus in the face of obstacles and few obvious results.

Goals are meant to be guideposts -- general targets -- and they require the author to have a wide interpretation for success. Being able to say you achieved a goal often means being willing for the result to look very differently than you initially intended. When you state a goal, you do not usually have enough information to be able to accurately predict exactly what the result will look, sound, and feel like.

Many job seekers start by defining the “ideal job” as either “not anything like the one I have” or “just like the one I have.” First of all, this is too vague to be able to measure. Secondly, after exploring some options and more clearly identifying personal desires and needs the picture of “the ideal job” changes.

So, to meet the goal of finding a new job by October 1, 2010, the job seeker must be willing to state the goal in such a way that s/he can find employment that is appropriate for who s/he will be at the end of the process.

For example: “I will be in a new position by October 1, 2010 that uses my strengths and challenges me to expand into new professional territory.” Or “I will be in a new position by October 1, 2010 that provides me with a strong balance of professional challenge and time for my family.”

Both of these offer a wide girth of interpretation and can be refined to include at minimum salary/compensation, commute distance, hours, responsibilities, etc. None of those refinements, however, should be too tight that they cut off possibilities. Furthermore, if you are new to writing and achieving goals, you may not achieve this goal 100% in your next position. It may take more attempts and more positions before you get all of those elements in place. The important piece is to keep moving toward your goal.

The next level of effectively writing goals is to recognize when a goal is no longer appropriate for you. For example, if you had a goal in your 20s to have a lifestyle “free of responsibility” and you are now in your late 30s wondering why you are still renting an apartment and your manager won’t give you that promotion – it may be time to change your idea of “the good life.” If you set a goal, achieve it, and then discover that you no longer really want that result, make a new goal for yourself.

We are complex beings who are ever changing in a complex world. To expect that our goals or we stay static is to adhere to the belief that the world is flat and that the Sun revolves around earth.

The main objective in setting goals is to experiment. Start small and build on your successes. Be willing to re-view yourself periodically and update your goals. Don’t let the appearance of “not meeting your goals” stop you from continuing to press forward toward your objective.