Day: July 19, 2022

24 examples of professional goals

1. Gain an internship

with a large company in your industry can be a great opportunity. With an internship, you can learn important industry skills, practices and methods and increase your professional network. You can also gain valuable experience to add to your resume, which can make you a more appealing candidate when you begin your job search. Try looking for local internships through laborer’s unions, job programs or local universities.

2. Increase your core skills

Consider what your core skills are in your job, as well as the soft and hard skills you can’t perform your job without. You can increase and enhance those skills through classes, mentors or internships. You can also use personal time to pursue new core skills to increase your employability. For example, an attorney might read books on law to increase their understanding of why certain laws are in place and how they work.

3. Grow your professional network

Growing your professional network can help you form important connections in your industry. Consider focusing on attending industry or work-related events, such as seminars, training sessions and casual gatherings. Try to make connections online through professional networking sites or email lists.

4. Advance in your company

Advancing in your company can mean moving to a position you feel is better suited to your skills, but it’s not necessarily a leadership position. You might want to move to a parallel position within the company in a different department or to a position that allows more creative freedom. You can think about when and why you want to advance and what skills or steps you need to reach that goal.

5. Obtain higher credentials

in your industry, which can create new employment and salary opportunities. For example, if you already have a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering, you can pursue a master’s degree to become a professor at the local university. Higher credentials also can help establish industry credibility.

6. Earn a higher salary

Many professionals work toward obtaining a higher salary. Earning more money can help you become more financially secure and confident in your position. Consider what your ideal salary is, what your current salary is and how you can work towards achieving your ideal salary, whether at your current job or in a new position.

7. Pursue a different career

You might want to pursue an entirely different career as your main professional goal. You could find greater satisfaction and happiness in a new career, as well as a higher salary and more opportunities. Consider what your ideal career is and how you can reach it from your current job. Consider reaching out to professional connections you have in other industries to see whether they might be a good fit for you.

8. Become an expert in your field

Becoming an expert in your field can provide many opportunities for employment and additional opportunities as a consultant or freelancer. Consider what credentials or experience current industry experts hold and how you can obtain those credentials. You can consider a mentorship from industry professionals to learn more about what industry leaders do daily.

9. Obtain a leadership position

Obtaining a leadership position can help you enhance your teamwork, collaboration and leadership skills and establish your credibility in the industry. Consider what type of leadership position you want and how you might reach that position. It’s important to determine whether the company you work for offers such opportunities or if you might need to pursue a career change.

10. Win an award in your industry

Winning an industry award can bring you notoriety with industry experts, increase your employability and establish your credentials as an industry expert. For example, winning an award as an interior designer can make you more recognizable and lead to more job opportunities. Awards differ by industry, but obtaining an award can require patience, skill and innovation. Consider where your industry might need innovation and apply your skills to that need.

11. Learn a new industry tool

Advancing technology often provides new and innovative tools for industries. Learning one of these new tools can give you a competitive advantage over other job candidates and may allow you to earn a higher salary. Consider the latest industry technology and pursue opportunities to learn more about it or how to use these tools.

12. Use your skills to start a business

Some professionals include starting a business as their primary career goals. If you think you have strong leadership skills, you can apply them and other industry skills to start your own business. Owning your own business can give you more creative freedom over your career path, help you earn a higher salary and provide a more flexible work schedule.

Why are goals so important?

1. They’re measurable

Setting goals can quantify or evaluate your growth. The SMART goal method, discussed in detail below, is one of many ways to track how you’re doing and where you might need to improve. Without measuring, you won’t know if you’re meeting goals or falling short. Measurable goals allow you to see when you need to reduce them into steps to make them more attainable.

2. They provide vision

What do you wish to learn? To achieve? Where do you want to be next month, next year? Goals are a wonderful way to help build your personal and professional mindsets, your physical skills, and more.

3. They provide clarity

Most people have a list of daily, weekly, monthly goals. But life is messy, and your goals can be easily forgotten or pushed aside. To stay focused on what you want to achieve, try using a whiteboard or online platform to outline your goals.

4. They help you stand out

If you set goals, you’ll achieve dreams. That’s bigger than completing the bare minimum responsibilities, and people will notice. Plus, when you hit your goals, you’ll be more confident.

How to set up goals

First things first: there’s no right or wrong way to set and achieve your goals. It all depends on your preferences and what works best for you. Regardless, clearly outlining what you’re striving toward is a great start.

S: Specific

M: Measurable

A: Attainable

Although pushing yourself to do better isn’t bad, your goals should be achievable. Developing plans too far out of reach isn’t healthy and can stir up negative feelings and attitudes. Setting goals should keep you inspired and working hard for yourself or your team, not discourage you.

R: Relevant

Your ambitions should be purposeful and suitable to your career and professional environment. If what you want to achieve isn’t in line with what you can achieve, maybe you need a career change.

T: Time-bound

Establishing a time frame to achieve your goals will help you work harder and smarter, and see results quicker. This also gives you a marker on the calendar so you can access whether or not you’ve achieved a goal. This gives you an opportunity to recalibrate as needed.

Looking back at what you’ve already accomplished can serve as a good source of motivation as you consider your SMART goals. Ask yourself why you set goals in the past, and if achieving them led to positive changes in your life. Asking these questions will boost your well-being and give you the necessary push to start.

Carving out some time to reflect about what you desire in life currently and later on will give you the room to explore and decide what path and what types of goals are best for you.

Source:

https://www.indeed.com/career-advice/career-development/examples-of-professional-goals
https://www.betterup.com/blog/work-goal-examples
https://instagantt.com/gantt-chart-experts/10-examples-of-professional-goals-for-work

Quotes for Students Who Want To Have the Best Year Ever

As a student, it’s easy to get bombarded and stressed out over assignments, studying, tests, etc. The secret to having the best year ever begins with having the right mindset. This mindset is rooted in the values of excellence in education and service. Education as a value focuses on learning and growing as a leader. Enjoy these excellent student quotes to help you strengthen your own Everyday Power on your academic path towards success.

Each day, offers the opportunity to gain new insights, expand one’s knowledge, and create innovative solutions. Education is an exploratory process of imagining, innovating, and developing ideas. Service provides an opportunity to combine education and action by making an impact in the global community.

20 Awesome Motivational Quotes for Students Success

This is not just a motivational quote for students’ success but one that everyone needs to apply in life. We often go behind bigger things and forget how little things can make a difference. If getting a good grade in all the subjects is your target, start with getting an A on one paper or one unit test. Ace one lesson and then go for the whole subject. If you don’t have the supplies to make your project look fancy, put in your efforts, do your research, and give it all you got in order to make it a great project from your end. The idea is not to be better than others but to be better than who you were yesterday.

This is one of the most important motivational quotes to study hard. It is a quote for success. More often than not, one failure brings down the spirits of students. A single exam or failure does not define who you are. The moment you give up on yourself and stop working hard because you faced a defeat, that’s when you are truly defeated. Your failure begins when you refuse to get up. Always remember that there’s nothing that you cannot achieve if you work for it. For instance, the pandemic brought the world to a standstill. It was a setback. However, people were quick to come up with solutions and strategies. Online classes and virtual classes became a way of life, we saw people coming together by staying apart.

If you are looking for motivational quotes for students’ success, this one is especially for you. You don’t have to hurry. Take things slowly, at your own pace. You don’t have to be in a race and become someone else. All you have to do is never stop trusting yourself and never stop growing and evolving.

Sir Abdul Kalam’s life in itself is a motivation for students and everyone. This is a very powerful motivational quote for students’ success. A small lifestyle and habit change can make a huge difference in your life. It might be how many hours you study, when you wake up or when you go to sleep, the books you read, it can be anything. But make sure you are doing something that will be beneficial to you in the future.

This is a very apt motivational quote for students because students often end up giving up on themselves and their dreams due to self-doubt and apprehension. You don’t have to doubt yourself; you just have to keep getting better at what you do.

This motivational quote from Eliot pushes everyone to go the mile to achieve great things. If you are afraid to go beyond the limit, you will always be in a box. Take risks and show the world what you are capable of.

8.“When you are doing any work, do not think of anything beyond. Do it as worship. As the highest worship and devote your whole life to it for the time being.” – Swami Vivekananda

This quote underlines the importance of commitment and devotion to the work that you do. Be it a simple assignment or a class test, give it your best. Don’t let your mind be distracted and you are the only one who can stop yourself from being distracted.

When you fail an exam, that’s not the end of life. It just means that you have to put in a little more effort than the last time. It is just a passing moment and does not define you. Study harder and make a comeback. We have discussed in detail about intrinsic motivation and extrinsic motivation in one of our previous blogs, read it here.

If you are apprehensive about doing something or not appearing for an exam in the fear that you will score fewer marks, you are just ensuring your failure. Never be afraid to take a new step. As discussed in the beginning, everything starts with the decision to try.

You can’t expect yourself to be the best on the very first day. You have to work for it and gain it through passion and commitment. If you are bad at Maths, do more sums and problems until you master it. Do your best and do not worry about the results.

Your education is an asset that no one can take away from you. It is not money that you should aim for, it is quality education. That is what will take you to places; the willingness to learn and the need to grow.

Always have a vision of what you want to achieve and what you want to become. When you lack motivation, think about that vision and you will win in life. These quotes for students’ motivation help you stay focused. It also makes one understand that no matter how many motivational thoughts for students you read, ultimately, you have to put in the effort to succeed.

The quote is self-explanatory. Everyone needs to apply this in life. No matter how defeated you think you are, you must always keep working on yourself and move forward. This is one of the most important motivational quotes for students and everyone else.

It is as simple as that. If you can dream about passing that exam, you can definitely do it. If you are dreaming to get into that college, you can. No one is saying that it might be easy, but it is definitely possible.

Source:

https://everydaypower.com/quotes-for-students/
https://blog.teachmint.com/motivational-quotes-for-students/
https://kidadl.com/quotes/best-academics-quotes-to-inspire-and-motivate-students

5 Easy Ways To Communicate Better in Your Relationship

I’m sure you’ve heard this saying before: communication is the key 🔑 to any relationship. It sounds cliché but it’s true. I think it’s really easy to tell people that communication is important in a healthy relationship but it’s not as easy to explain how to communicate. And if we’re never taught how to use this key, then we’ll never be able to open the door to healthy communication.

Communication is defined as a lot of things but my favorite definition includes, “the successful conveying or sharing of ideas and feelings”. I always say I’m a great talker, but I have to also be an equally great listener in order to be a great communicator. Communication is about expressing yourself in a healthy way, listening to your partner when they are doing the same, and really hearing and absorbing what the other person has to say.

Below are 5 tips for communicating better in your relationship:

1. Ask Open-Ended Questions

Communication is not just about talking about each other’s days and saying what you had to eat for lunch. It’s about being able to dig deep and get to know this person as well as you can. It’s not always easy to dig deep, especially for those who have never been comfortable talking about their feelings. And it’s not necessary to make every conversation a heart to heart.

There are ways to do this without pressuring your S.O. to spill their deepest secrets. For example, i nstead of asking yes or no questions like “Did you have a good day?” try asking more open-ended questions like, “How was your day?” Yes, they may respond with a brief non-answer (“good”, “fine”, “the same”), but asking open-ended questions gives them an opportunity to share more if they choose to. Keep in mind that not everyone opens up very easily. Be patient with your partner if they are not sharing all the time. We set boundaries around our emotions and everyone’s boundaries are different. So, be mindful and respectful of their emotional boundaries, and they should be equally mindful and respectful of yours.

Ultimately, the more you get to know your S.O. on a deeper level, the more open and honest you may be with each other. And honesty breeds trust, which are two very important pillars of a healthy relationship (hint: communication is another super important pillar!).

Make friends with your anger

Lots of people are raised to avoid expressing any anger or upset feelings. If you grew up in a family where anger was only expressed in passive aggressive ways or if you grew up with a parent who expressed anger in scary, out of control ways, you might avoid expressing anger. These early associations make it difficult to separate the healthy emotion of anger from the unhealthy expressions of anger.

When it comes to relationships, anger tends to get a bad rap. but All people experience anger sometimes, so learning how to express it effectively in your relationship is a key communication skill.

Anger is frequently referred to as a “secondary” emotion, because it often comes in response to another feeling, like sadness, hurt, fear or anxiety. This means that when you’re angry, it’s worth pausing to take a deep breath and check in with yourself to see what you might be feeling in addition to your anger.

Taking time to check in with your feelings lets you share the full range of emotions with your partner, not just your anger. It gives your partner the opportunity to understand you better and have empathy for how you’re feeling, rather than just responding to your anger with defensiveness.

Saying something like “I’ve been wanting to talk with you about what happened this morning. I’ve been feeling angry about it, but now I also see my feelings were hurt when you walked away from me in the middle of our conversation and then left without saying goodbye” is more likely to receive an empathetic response than “I can’t believe the way you left this morning when I was trying to talk to you! Why do you always have to be such a jerk?”

Skill 3: Keep stress in check

How many times have you felt stressed during a disagreement with your spouse, kids, boss, friends, or coworkers and then said or done something you later regretted? If you can quickly relieve stress and return to a calm state, you’ll not only avoid such regrets, but in many cases you’ll also help to calm the other person as well. It’s only when you’re in a calm, relaxed state that you’ll be able to know whether the situation requires a response, or whether the other person’s signals indicate it would be better to remain silent.

In situations such as a job interview, business presentation, high-pressure meeting, or introduction to a loved one’s family, for example, it’s important to manage your emotions, think on your feet, and effectively communicate under pressure.

Communicate effectively by staying calm under pressure

Use stalling tactics to give yourself time to think. Ask for a question to be repeated or for clarification of a statement before you respond.

Pause to collect your thoughts. Silence isn’t necessarily a bad thing—pausing can make you seem more in control than rushing your response.

Make one point and provide an example or supporting piece of information. If your response is too long or you waffle about a number of points, you risk losing the listener’s interest. Follow one point with an example and then gauge the listener’s reaction to tell if you should make a second point.

Deliver your words clearly. In many cases, how you say something can be as important as what you say. Speak clearly, maintain an even tone, and make eye contact. Keep your body language relaxed and open.

Wrap up with a summary and then stop. Summarize your response and then stop talking, even if it leaves a silence in the room. You don’t have to fill the silence by continuing to talk.

Quick stress relief for effective communication

When a conversation starts to get heated, you need something quick and immediate to bring down the emotional intensity. By learning to quickly reduce stress in the moment, you can safely take stock of any strong emotions you’re experiencing, regulate your feelings, and behave appropriately.

Recognize when you’re becoming stressed. Your body will let you know if you’re stressed as you communicate. Are your muscles or stomach tight? Are your hands clenched? Is your breath shallow? Are you “forgetting” to breathe?

Bring your senses to the rescue. The best way to rapidly and reliably relieve stress is through the senses—sight, sound, touch, taste, smell—or movement. For example, you could pop a peppermint in your mouth, squeeze a stress ball in your pocket, take a few deep breaths, clench and relax your muscles, or simply recall a soothing, sensory-rich image. Each person responds differently to sensory input, so you need to find a coping mechanism that is soothing to you.

Look for humor in the situation. When used appropriately, humor is a great way to relieve stress when communicating. When you or those around you start taking things too seriously, find a way to lighten the mood by sharing a joke or an amusing story.

Be willing to compromise. Sometimes, if you can both bend a little, you’ll be able to find a happy middle ground that reduces the stress levels for everyone concerned. If you realize that the other person cares much more about an issue than you do, compromise may be easier for you and a good investment for the future of the relationship.

Agree to disagree, if necessary, and take time away from the situation so everyone can calm down. Go for a stroll outside if possible, or spend a few minutes meditating. Physical movement or finding a quiet place to regain your balance can quickly reduce stress.

Skill 4: Assert yourself

Direct, assertive expression makes for clear communication and can help boost your self-esteem and decision-making skills. Being assertive means expressing your thoughts, feelings, and needs in an open and honest way, while standing up for yourself and respecting others. It does NOT mean being hostile, aggressive, or demanding. Effective communication is always about understanding the other person, not about winning an argument or forcing your opinions on others.

To improve your assertiveness:

Value yourself and your options. They are as important as anyone else’s.

Know your needs and wants. Learn to express them without infringing on the rights of others

Express negative thoughts in a positive way. It’s okay to be angry, but you must remain respectful as well.

Receive feedback positively. Accept compliments graciously, learn from your mistakes, ask for help when needed.

Learn to say “no.” Know your limits and don’t let others take advantage of you. Look for alternatives so everyone feels good about the outcome.

Developing assertive communication techniques

Empathetic assertion conveys sensitivity to the other person. First, recognize the other person’s situation or feelings, then state your needs or opinion. “I know you’ve been very busy at work, but I want you to make time for us as well.”

Escalating assertion can be employed when your first attempts are not successful. You become increasingly firm as time progresses, which may include outlining consequences if your needs are not met. For example, “If you don’t abide by the contract, I’ll be forced to pursue legal action.”

Practice assertiveness in lower risk situations to help build up your confidence. Or ask friends or family if you can practice assertiveness techniques on them first.

Get more help

Source:

https://www.joinonelove.org/learn/5-easy-ways-to-communicate-better-in-your-relationships/
https://alchemy-of-love.com/expert-relationship-advice/how-to-communicate-relationship
https://www.helpguide.org/articles/relationships-communication/effective-communication.htm