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Lea McLeod provides us some tips on how we can set ambitious career goals that does not overwhelm us:

1. Bring in Clarity:
Lea opines that the career goals can be successful only if they are specific. We need to create clear vision for ourselves on what we want our career to look like in one, three or five years. She also adds to

Ask yourself: What’s your job like? What kind of skills and responsibilities do you have? Who is your employer, and what is your job like? What are you totally awesome at? What kind of team do you work with?
When we clearly visualize the desired outcome, we begin to see the possibility of achieving it—and we can start taking steps to build our career plan

2. It Has to Challenge You—But With a Realistic Outcome:
Lea gives an example of someone is in the second year of public accounting, and the goal is to become CFO of Apple by the end of next year, then that person needs to have the head in the clouds.  Although that person may know the basics of accounting, there is still a long road ahead before becoming the the CFO of one of the world’s largest company!
Rather, that individual could start acquiring the skills and knowledge to achieve the goal later if not in the immediate future

3. Be Committed:
Lea points out that there are many people who complain about their job and want to change but take zero action to actually make that change. When they have multiple reasons for not taking the right amount of effort it reflects that the person is not committed to a particular goal. She suggests that we need to share our goals with others, which can hold us accountable to make progress along the way. Also, we can get committed to the goal only when we are convinced that the goal is important to us and that it’s attainable.

4. Feedback is Essential:

Lea also suggests to identify key mentors and coaches to share our goals as stated above in order to be committed and get regular feedback. This can help us make tweaks to our actions based on the feedback received regularly. Having a feedback mechanism can also help us feel motivated, stay on track and feel a sense of accomplishment throughout the entire process

5. Creating right conditions for Success:

Lea recommends that successfully achieving our goals requires just two conditions: time and practice.
Firstly to avoid burning out and quitting on unrealistic goals, she suggest us to create intermediate objectives that we have enough time to complete, given our real-life commitments.
Then, practice! Lea recommends that we give ourselves time to learn, experiment, and fail in a safe environment, while we keep moving our career plan forward.