Shout It Out Loud

Now that you have a clear goal in mind, share it. Oh, my, I know this is a terrifying step. Yes, you need to tell any many people as you can about your goal. You need to tell your loved ones, your friends, your trusted network and, if it’s safe to share at work, your boss and co-workers.

Shouting your goal from the mountain tops will help make it real and make you accountable to your goal. People will ask you about it, you will have to share about your progress or goal realignments.

I told everyone I knew about my goal. I was able to share my goal very transparently because it was so life-changing for myself, my family and the people in my life. Making a big change needs to be shared.

This step is terrifying. Do not underestimate the fear and anxiety that comes with this step. It will cause sleepless nights and butterflies in your stomach.

With my goal of moving out of the state, I knew it was important for my boss, and dear friend, that I was looking to relocate within in the year. It took me weeks of psyching myself up to tell her. It took many a fretful conversations with my husband at the kitchen table talking about the consequences of sharing my goal. We went through all the possibilities – What if she fires me on the spot? What if she said, okay, you only 6 months left in this job before we’re hiring someone else? What if she really wants to keep me and wants me to work remotely? What if she gets really supportive but personally hurt? What if…

You can’t be afraid of the “what if” in achieving your goals. If the goal is beneficial to you and the people you love most, it is worth every poor outcome. That is scary to say, but it’s true. Setting goals has to be about you first, the people you love second. Everything else really doesn’t matter.

You can come back from a financial set-back or a career mistep. If you are unhappy in your current situation or if it is hurting the people you love, you have the responsibility to get out of that situation.

Sharing my goal was also incredibly rewarding. I found that I had a HUGE team of cheerleaders who were there for me when I was down or feeling that I’d never make my goal. It was my act of sharing my goal that made it possible.

There are varying degrees of sharing a goal:

• Talk to your Trusted Network – Just talking to your partners, friends, family and trusted network of colleagues can make the goal real. Your trusted network are the professinal connections that you trust not to carry your goal back to your bosses or other people who can have a negtive impact on your goal. For smaller goals, this might be the only step you need to take.
• Sharing with Life Influencers – There are times when you will need to include people who are “Life Influencers” like your boss or coworkers in a goal. Life Influencers are people who can have a outside positive or negative effect on your life. Be careful with this share. Make sure that you are prepared for the outcomes. Do not be fearful of sharing your goals with these Influencers if you think it will help them or you, but just fully think through the possible outcomes.
• Living a Networked Life – The biggest way to share your goal is to share it with strangers and a very expanded network. You can do this through a blog, setting up a Twitter account or joining a group of like-minded people. This is by far the most transparent way of sharing your goal, but it also has a lot of rewards.

Without a doubt, I achieved my goal as completely and quickly because I expanded my goal sharing to the Networked Life level. I shared my goals wildly with everyone I met. I made it clear that this is what I was working on at the moment. I found so much joy in sharing my goal, I can’t imagine doing it any other way.

Be Laser Targeted

The first step to achieving a goal it to, well, have a goal.  The more focused your goal the more likely you will be able to achieve it.

In my case, my goal was “To move to my family to Raleigh, NC as a nonprofit communications or public relations director-level position by my 30th birthday, June 30, 2010, so I can live near the ocean.” While my actual achievement was “Moving my family to Raleigh, NC to work as a manager of social media by July 2010, so I can live near the ocean.” The important part is not perfection, it is about setting a clear goal.

Goals can changes and you need to be flexible to the end means. This can be difficult when you are in the thick of working towards a goal. You will have stumbling blocks, indecision and discovery along the way. That is all part of working on something worth achieving.

So what goes into a good goal statement?

• Set a deadline – Having a time constraint will keep you motivated. Without an end date, you will likely put off your goal and keep putting other things in your life first. Also, for the sake of sanity, make your deadline plausible. There is nothing more defeating than having to slip deadlines because it as impossible to reach in the first place. Give yourself some time to work on the goal and enjoy the process of personal growth.
• Measure your success – Adding concrete numbers or locations or job titles to your goal will keep you laser targeted. For me, Raleigh, NC was my measurable. It was the focus location of my job search. For you it might be going back to school to get your MBA or managing one person.
• Reason for the work – In your goal statement, remind yourself WHY you want to do all this hard work. For me it was living near the ocean, exploring a new state and advancing my career. Having a positive, real reason of why you want to put yourself through all this craziness will make it easier. We all need that pot of gold at the end of the rainbow.

Now that you have a goal statement, come back to it periodically to make sure it is what you really want to achieve. In your discovery of working on your goal, did you realize that you don’t want to achieve it anymore? That’s an awesome discovery. Let yourself adapt to  your perfect goal. You might achieve an augmented goal, just to realize that you need to go back to the original goal.

Most of all, be kind to yourself through this process. You are trying to reach a very difficult goal or else you wouldn’t need to go to these lengths to achieve it. Take it a step at a time. Be real with yourself. Be happy in your pursuit of dreams.

Secrets to My Success

Now that I’ve achieved my dream of moving to North Carolina and living near the ocean, I want to share some of my tips and tricks to help others network into a dream city or job. These will be a menu of tactics to help get you integrated into a community of people. These tips will augment your already shining personality and skills to help you achieve your dreams.

Do you have a favorite tip that always works? Or do you have any questions on how to live a networked life? Let me know! I’d love to hear about it!