That lyric stuck in my head, along with the catchy tune from the Boomtown Rats, bringing me back to days of Top 40 radio in the late 1970s.

It is Monday as I write this blogpost and begin to embark upon different daily themes for much of the new blogpost content moving ahead. As such, content on this first weekday will be motivational, that is Motivation Mondays. Yes, it may be a bit cliché, but sometimes we must take certain measures to keep on track.

With the inception of the World Cup tournament recently, I thought that this first motivational post should be goal oriented. Sure, defense is fine in some cases, but even the best defense will come up winless without a goal to offset the score.

As you transition from the weekend into the “work week”, you should have some clear goals in mind, to accomplish as you progress. And, for those of you whose work may be a full-time job search, having goals might be even more important. So, let’s set some goals, then! Once you have a goal in mind, you can then start to plan. In fact, Napoleon Hill, who interviewed many, many successful people in the 1930s and wrote the classic motivational text, Think and Grow Rich, advises us to,

Create a definite plan for carrying out your desire and begin at once, whether you are ready or not, to put this plan into action.

Additionally, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, the French aristocrat, writer and poet of the early twentieth century, reminds us that,

A goal without a plan is just… a wish.

If you’ve set your goal(s) and made your plan for the week, now it’s time to get to work, and stick to that plan, minimizing distractions, in order to reach your goal. Now you must make things happen, in alignment with your goal. Of course, your ultimate goal is to get that great new job, but along the way, it’s more practical to focus on smaller goals – whether it be strengthening your resume, practicing your interviewing skills with a friend, preparing a set of success stories to relate during an interview, or conducting an informational interview.

You must focus on your goal to persevere, but you can do it! And it may not be easy, but it should be worth it. Keep in mind the sage words on revered American football coaching legend, Vince Lombardi, who said,

Leaders aren’t born, they are made. And they are made just like anything else, through hard work. And that’s the price we’ll have to pay to achieve that goal, or any goal.

Therefore, set your goal today, plan the work today, work hard all week, stick to your goal all week, until you reach that goal! Once you’re done, set another goal – you know that you can do it, so start NOW!

As the story goes, there were six of us in a small, single-wing Cessna plane with the passenger seats removed.  I volunteered to be the first to jump because I was afraid that if I saw the others go first, I might get “cold feet”.  So, when the instructor told me that it was time, I climbed out of the plane onto the step, and awaited the signal to leap backwards — the actual jump.

A funny thing happened just after I jumped, though.  My helmet came off and was now travelling earthward, without the benefit of its own parachute.

Two lessons from that day can also be applied to your job search:

1.    You can’t change the past, so make the best of it.

I was never going to get my helmet back, so I focused on the new experience of floating to earth.  Similarly, your past jobs are all behind you.   But, you can use the job search to focus on rediscovering many of the accomplishments achieved and skills learned, which you hadn’t had time to think about when you were in the thick of things.

2.    Storytelling is a great skill to develop.

And, once you’ve made a list of the accomplishments and skills mentioned above, you’ll want to present them in an interesting and engaging manner.  This is where storytelling techniques come in.  Practice recounting your stories with friends and family, asking for honest feedback on how to improve your presentation.  This is great practice in advance of a successful interview.

A job hunter should develop a file of at least twelve accomplishment stories, framed to be presented using a P-A-R approach.  (I’ll be sure to cover the use of  P-A-R, or the Problem – Action – Result method, in a future blogpost.)

Do you have at least twelve accomplishment stories written down, and committed to memory, in preparation for your next interview?  If not, you should start preparing them today.