1 Simple Tip to Achieve Your Big Career Goals - The Muse

1 Simple Tip to Achieve Your Big Career Goals - The Muse1 Simple Tip to Achieve Your Big Career GoalsYou know those lofty goals that are always lingering in the back of your mind? The ones that you promise youll get to one day? Maybe you want to make a career change. Perhaps youve been planning for years to get a side hustle up and running. Or, maybe you want to further your education or obtain some sort of certification. Those ambitions are exciting. But, lets face it- they can also be paralyzing. Lets take a career change as an example. In buchung to successfully make that switch, you need to completely revamp your resume. In order to do a halfway-decent resume refresh, you need to get a little more relevant experience. In order to get more experience, you need to put yourself out there for volunteer opportunities or side gigs. In order to land those jobswell, you get the idea. You continue this domino effect until you back yourself into a corner of complete inaction. Theres too mu ch to do- so, you do nothing. Take comfort in the fact that you arent alone in this self-defeating habit. Im guilty of this very saatkorn thing (and Im sure many other people are as well). Thats why I found this article by Josh Spector so inspiring.In the piece, Spector presents a seemingly obvious (yet often-overlooked) piece of advice Just get started.Stop looking for reasons you cant do the work of your dreams, he writes. Start looking for ways you can.Seriously, have you stopped and considered what would happen if you just got started? If you stopped mapping out each piece and overanalyzing every possible blunder and just took a single step forward? Spector goes on to encourage readers to skip right past any kind of preparation phase (which, I do think theres some merit to). But, if youre a tried and true planner like me, theres still a way you can apply this advice- without sending yourself into a panic. Heres what that might look like in practice Take that long-term goal thats on your list and identify one thing- big or small- you can do today that gets you one step closer to the finish line.Reach out to someone for an informational interview. Buy a domain name. Sign up for a webinar or zugreifbar course. Submit your name for a volunteer opportunity. Start a website. Write a blog post. Find one job you want to apply for. The list goes on and on. The trick? When youve picked out just one task, actually do it today. Tomorrow, do one more thing that pushes you in the right direction. Before you know it, the snowball will keep rolling and- slowly, but surely- youre picking up momentum where you were previously at a standstill. Put simply, dont fall into the common trap of confusing the act of planning to take action with actually taking action. When you stop making excuses and delaying your own progress, Spector says, things really start to happen for you. Youll get experience. Youll create opportunity. It will lead to things you cant currently imagine, he c oncludes. You just need to decide to do it.

Heres proof that happiness doesnt come from achievement

Heres proof that happiness doesnt come from achievementHeres proof that happiness doesnt come from achievementWhen I welches a teenager, I thought the moment I achieved Gladiator status in the World of Warcraft, I would be fulfilled and forever happy.I became one of the highest ranked World of Warcraft players in North America and got extremely depressed. It wasnt enough.When I started bodybuilding, I thought as soon as I hit 160 lbs, I would be happy. Satisfied. Done.I hit 160 lbs and decided I needed to be 165 lbs in order to be happy.I hit 165 lbs and decided I needed to be 170 lbs in order to be happy.I hit 170 lbs and decided I needed to be 175 lbs in order to be happy.See? Look how happy I am here I still felt small.It wasnt enoughWhen I was right out of college, I thought, If only I was making $100 more dollars a month, then I would feel more comfortable. Then I would be happy.I started making $100 dollars more a month. It wasnt enough. So I thought, Oh, well if only I was mak ing $200 dollars more a month Then, then I would be happy.I started making $200 dollars more a month. It wasnt enough.This continued on for quite a while until I had literally tripled my income and still, still, STILL felt like it wasnt enough.When I first started working on my book, Confessions of a Teenage Gamer, I thought, The reason this is so difficult is because its not perfect. Once I write it this way, Ill think its perfect and then Ill be happy.I wrote the first draft. 400-some pages. It wasnt perfect. I threw it away. I thought, Hmm Well, thats because it wasnt perfect enough. It needs to be more perfect. It needs to be better.So I started again.Wrote another full draft. From scratch. 400-some pages. It wasnt perfect. I threw it away. Hmm Well thats because it wasnt perfect enough It needs to be more perfect, more perfect than perfect.So I started again.I wrote ANOTHER full draft. From scratch. 400-some pages. It took me 5 years to realize that perfect was not a real thi ng. It didnt exist. I was asking it to be something it could never be.There is no such thing as perfect.When I got ready to publish it, I thought, Ok, once its published, then Ill feel happy. Then Ill feel fulfilled.I published my book. I still wanted more.It was then that I realized two thingsFirst Its ok to want more. As humans, we are goal-setters. We are always looking for the next mountain to conquer. There is something wonderful about that experience, the exploration of life. And its not about suppressing it, but rather understanding it.Which leads to Second Nothing will ever be enough, as long as you are looking to the thing to fulfill you.I have climbed many mountains. For a 28-year-old, I have climbed more mountains than I can even comprehend.To those that know me, and look from the outside, every so often they reveal their true thoughts. You intimidate me, Cole. You have accomplished so muchCan I let you in on a little secret?99% of the time, I feel like I havent accomplis hed a damn thing.One of the most difficult things I have had to confront in my own life has been this, right here. This idea that no mountain, trophy, reward, title, battle won, or achievement will ever, ever, ever be enough.Because the true feeling of happiness, contentment, joy, and the ability to be at ease with yourself comes from within.You could be standing on Mount Everest and feel like a worthless failure.And you could be sitting in your room with your fingers in a bunch of paint while you scoop a glob of red into your palm and smear it all over a bunch of newspaper on your floor and feel completely in the moment - happy.It doesnt matter what you do in life. It doesnt matter what the achievement is, or what industry youre in, or what your passions are, or what road you travel.Trust me, Ive tried a lot of themI thought gaming was the problem, so I moved to fitness.I thought fitness was the problem, so I moved to business.I thought business was the problem, so I moved to, etc . Its not the thing - its the way you do it. Its the relationship you have with yourself along the way. Its the ability to walk your path, each and every day, and enjoy the process of wherever it is youre going.But as long as you think its all going to be wonderful and perfect at the end, you will always be unsatisfied.There is no end.Thanks for reading ??This article originally appeared on Medium.

This magic bullet email can land you a job

This magic bullet email can land you a jobThis magic bullet email can land you a jobThis e-mail-nachricht is a magic bullet. It follows a very specific format and will get you a meeting that will lead to your new job. The catch is, you need to actually have done the work to support the claims you make in this e- mail for it to succeed, and that takes a lot of effort.Consider this as a road map. If you do the work necessary to write this e-mail, you will get a meeting and a job.Companies get hundreds of resumes full of real skills but no mission they also get job applicants bursting with a personal mission who have no skills. This e-mail works because it proves that you have both. Here are the four paragraphs necessary for this e-mail to work1. Prove three ways that you have a real skill.Companies need people with real skills. Choose a skill that you know the company needs, based on all the research you have done in your company brief (78). Companies need people with skills that are d irectly applicable to the real jobs they need done, like account-ing, project management, and design. Soft skills like leadership and willingness to learn dont count.If you dont immediately know how to prove that you have the skills they need, try the following exercises make a list of your skills (69), make a list of what you want to learn (72), and take a course outside of school (82).2. Prove three ways that you are mission-aligned.You must prove that you are committed to the mission of the company with tangible examples. Whether its through the extensive interviews you have done with leaders in the field (115), sharing the results of a line of inquiry (90), or the volunteer experience that you did five years ago, show what you have done. You need to prove that you are mission-aligned, and that means much mora than a one-liner at the top of a resume template.3. Say that you were going to do it yourself, but you can create a deeper impact by working with their company.Tell them th at you have been thinking, researching, and beginning to work in this field and then you found their company. Tell them that you realized their company is doing the same work or research that you had begun to do by yourself and how much more you could do if you worked together with them.4. Request an opportunity to talk.Finally, in the last paragraph, ask for the opportunity to talk, get advice, and learn about how you can work together. Close the e-mail with a simple request. Always approach this request as though you are already doing this work. In the meeting itself, all you need to do is iterate the ways that you have mission alignment and employable skills, and tell them that you want to find a role within their company where you can put all of this into action to bring the company value. It is rare that someone has put in the effort to make the claims youre making in this e-mail. Youll stand out from the crowd, and youre guaranteed to get a meeting.Disclaimer This e-mail takes a tremendous amount of work to ensure that it is authentic and effective. You have to commit to building and strengthening real skills and to becoming mission- aligned so that its impossible to fake. If you are short on either mission or skills, employers will be able to tell and the e-mail wont work.There is a pathway to get a job with the company that you want to work for, and this e-mail is one of the final steps. This is just a template, so treat it as a roughly hewn guide. Each e-mail you write should be unique and reflect the specific mission and purpose of the company. There are thousands of stories any one of us can tell of our experiences. The employer wont do the work to understand your story, but you can, and, with any luck, the employer will not only notice, but hire you because of it.Reprinted from 50 Ways to Get a Job An Unconventional Guide to Finding Work on Your Terms by arrangement with TarcherPerigee, an imprint of Penguin Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Random House LLC. Copyright 2018, Dev Aujla.Dev Aujla is the CEO of Catalog, a recruiting and insight firm that has provided talent and high level strategy to some of the worlds most innovative companies including from BMW, GOOD Magazine, Change.org, and Planned Parenthood. He speaks regularly and blogs for outlets that include INC Magazine and Fast Company. His writing and work have been featured in dozens of media outlets including the New York Times, Glamour Magazine, MSNBC, CBC and The Globe and Mail.