Day One::The First Step

"The first step to getting what you want, is deciding what you want." ~Unknown

I saw that statement on a tee shirt recently, and it struck me as rather obvious. It's a concept that we talked about alot in my college courses (Public Relations and Marketing). They always taught us as nice as it would be to think that we can reach everyone with our message, there's very very few messages that have universal appeal so first things first - decide who you want to reach (or select your target audience). However, the more I really thought about the quote, the more I realized maybe it's just not as obvious as it should be.

Anyone who knows me also knows that I took the scenic route in completing my education. There are several factors in this, but the biggest is really that when I left school without my degree I didn't really have any concept of what I wanted to do with my life. I had no direction at all and therefore the degree didn't seem that important to me.

A few years of working full time and I learned quickly that the degree I had been so dismissive of was more important than I ever imagined. Even without knowing exactly what I wanted to do, I knew that I had to have a degree to do anything I really wanted to do and it gave me purpose when I went to go back and finish. That purpose helped drive me to the Dean's List my last year of college.

It's easy to see how you have to know where you want to go in your career or school to really get there, but the same thing is true of our personal lives and for some people that concept is a little more difficult to grasp. It's easy to strive for the goal to be happy, but to really be happy you have to consider what you need to be happy. A book full of friends phone numbers? Dates every night of the week? A house with a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, and a cat sleeping on cushion near the fireplace?

Any goal is ultimately attainable, but you have to take the time to set the goal and realize what you'll need to get where you want to be.

You also have to know that it's okay to go "off roading" sometimes, as long as you return to the path you've set for yourself. But that's for another time...