Spring into Success!

Happy Start to Spring 2018!

Whether this is your first semester or your 8^th (or more) semester, the Career Center welcomes you to Spring 2018! We hope that you had a great holiday season and winter break.

If you are like me, you might approach the winter months as a sort of hibernation – a time to relax and also prepare for the upcoming year.

Although I do not get as much rest as I would like to during the winter, I do give myself permission to spend the month of January to set my intentions for the year and develop a loose action plan to follow. It’s not too late to start this process; I still haven’t finished my 2018 goals to be completely honest. Below are some tips that I have found beneficial over the years that have helped me set and achieve my goals.

• Visualize

Something that I started doing this year was creating a vision board; I have one that I keep in my office and one that I keep at home. The image of my vision board is also the screen lock picture on my phone so that I have a constant reminder of what it is that I would like to see happen this year. Even if vision boards aren’t your thing, I would encourage you to think about how you would like your life to look over a certain stretch of time. Call it faith, the universe, or the power of The Secret/Law of Attraction, but I am a firm believer that whatever you put into the universe is what you will attract. Time to put the great vibes out there and see what happens over time!

*The Secret - https://www.thesecret.tv/about/history-of-the-secret/

• Create an Action Plan

It’s not enough to visualize alone, you have to come up with a plan in order to help make your good vibes come into fruition. One framework, see below, is the SMART goals framework, so that you can get specific with what it is you hope to achieve and by what time line. If this is a new process for you, try starting with one goal that you would like to accomplish this month and then apply the framework to other timelines as you become more comfortable. It also might be beneficial to only focus on a maximum of 3 goals at a time during any period so that you don’t find yourself spread thin and unable to complete the tasks.

• Execute

Once you have your game plan and good vibes, it’s time to execute. Work the plan and make adjustments along the way. The beauty of this part of the process is that you can always course correct. The deadlines are used to guide you, but there will be times when you have to adjust your timelines, and that is okay.

• Repeat

Once you have accomplished your first set of goals, it is time to reflect and then start the process over. My process is a bit intense for some, but I do quarterly check-ins with myself to see how I am progressing and then each year I start the visualization and goal-setting process over again.

Hope you found this helpful! Have a great Spring semester and we look forward to helping you achieve all of your successes!

Ava Danville, MBA

Assistant Director

The Career Center, Hofstra University