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'Face unafraid' your dreams-turned-goals
A goal carries weight and implies intention; a dream is something that even the bearer tends to discount. If you're going to achieve a dream, it needs to jump the line and become a goal.
Every January I write a column about how I love the new year - and New Year's Day, in particular. It's my favorite holiday by far, for a host of reasons: no obligations, no gift-giving, no phone calls to return and nothing I care about on TV. The day is wholly mine and I can spend it playing in the snow, reading a good book or making plans for the new year.
Making plans often reminds me of a verse from the holiday song "Winter Wonderland": "Later on we'll conspire, as we sit by the fire, to face unafraid the plans that we've made, walking in a ..." You can hum the rest if you like, although by now you've probably heard enough of this tune to hold you for a while.
Before tucking the song away for the year, take another look at that line: "To face unafraid the plans that we've made." Now ask yourself: Do I make my plans with boldness and confidence? Or do I put them forward tentatively, like a turtle poking its head out a millimeter before snapping back into a comfort zone?
My clients often have heard me say, "Plan for success." Like the line from the song, this mantra sounds trite at first but gains meaning with application.
For people planning to start a business, for example, "plan for success" leads to discussion of the wonderful possibility that their marketing will work and the customers will flood in. What then? Will they wish they had leased offices with room to grow? Will they regret buying a cellphone instead of a three-line system?
Although it's possible to overestimate sales and be awash in equipment or inventory, I've learned that an awful lot of business owners achieve the growth they envision. In other words, when they assume that they will not need extra help, they essentially are consigning themselves to work alone. Heaven help them if the customers do come, because they won't have the capacity to serve them.
Which brings us back to those plans - the ones we're supposed to face unafraid once they've been made. I'm not tossing rocks from my glass house, by the way. I'm as guilty as the next person of tiptoeing into the future as if it was going to disappear.
But I've learned that making plans is the starting point; without this step I might not fail, but neither will I succeed. Years will pass as I stand in a holding pattern, until I'm too numb to realize I'm stuck. I'd like to say I'm exaggerating, and so would you. But even those who haven't experienced this phenomenon have seen it unfold in others' lives.
It isn't pretty.
Some of my clients tell me they are not planners by nature. They enjoy their lives and don't need to reach far for contentment. And yet, here they are in my office, needing to replace a job that disappeared or return to school for retraining. So plan they must. If you have trouble with planning, I'd like to invite you to start by dreaming. What would you like in your life that you don't have now? What do you have now that you'd like to keep?
Once you've written down some dreams, review the list for priorities of any kind. Perhaps there is something there that you care about deeply or something that could be achieved quickly. However you do it, choose one or two dreams as your priority goals.
Did you notice the switch from dream to goal? That's an important bit of linguistics.
A goal carries weight and implies intention; a dream is something that even the bearer tends to discount. If you're going to achieve a dream, it needs to jump the line and become a goal.By now you might be feeling just a little afraid. That would be a good sign, as it shows you're taking the exercise seriously. There's nothing quite so terrifying as the potential of success - not even failure. That's because most of us have developed ways to handle disappointment but have almost no tools for dealing with success. When entering this uncharted territory of potential success, the trick is to somehow overcome the fear and move ahead anyway.
Which brings us back to that corny song and the line I keep in my head all year long. I wish you a good year, but, more than that, I wish you a little fear and the resolve to overcome it. Start making those plans.
- Amy Lindgren owns Prototype Career Service, a career consulting firm in St. Paul, Minn. She can be reached at alindgren@prototypecareerservice.com or at 1071 W. Seventh St., St. Paul, MN 55102.
