SKILL
driving so far from home, fearing you’ll get lost, or have engine trouble, or maybe an accident. You don’t even know what to pack. In spite of all this, you fill your car to the brim and take off. However, because you’re nervous, you miss an exit. The car overheats from carrying too much weight. While you’re trying to pull off the highway, you’re rear-ended. Now you’re actu- ally worse off than when you started – and you didn’t even come close to reaching your goal.
The Right Use of Energy for Professional Growth
ALFRED R. STIELAU-PALLAS
The road to success has so many destinations that the choices seem limitless. Maybe you think you know where you’re going and which goal is most important to you. Or maybe you don’t know yet, but you are doing nothing to reach it – or letting someone else direct you. In either case, what you need is a decision, direction, and commitment.
WHERE ARE YOU GOING? A half-hearted effort toward an unclear goal will use energy without achieving results.
Imagine yourself taking a vacation.
You arrive at the town’s main intersec- tion. The signs indicate many possible destinations, but you haven’t decided where to go. So you sit with your mo- tor running and, eventually, run out of gas. You have used time and energy – but you have accomplished nothing. Or suppose you have several places
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you’d like to visit. You head toward the first place. Then you change your mind, make a U-turn, and start off toward your new destination. Now you run into rush-hour traffic and redirect your trip again. Your gas tank is almost empty so you take the next exit and pull into a service station. You realize you are back where you began! With the same amount of energy you could have reached any of your choices. Perhaps you want to travel from coast to coast – but you’re afraid of
Maybe you have decided to take a several-hundred-mile trip to attend a niece’s wedding, despite an important deadline at work. You don’t figure out how much gas you will need or how many hours it will take to get there – you just get going. After driving until you’re exhausted, you pull over to refuel and get a map. At this point, you realize: 1) You really can’t afford this trip, and 2) Even if you reached your goal, you wouldn’t have time to get back and meet your deadline. In all these cases you have ex- pended energy without reaching your destination. Deciding on your goal, concentrating on only that goal, recognizing obstacles, and recognizing extra energy needs to attain your goal are all fundamen- tal to achievement. This holds true whether it is an actual destination, a business quota, or a personal dream you are trying to reach. Maybe you’re great at planning and taking trips. So let’s use another example. You are attending a conven- tion. It is dinner time and the hotel has provided a large buffet. You will notice several indecisive “types” as they move through the line. There are those who don’t know what they want yet and they pass many dishes – waiting to see if some- thing better is ahead of them. When they reach the end, they discover they haven’t gotten anything and must start over again. Some of them can’t decide what they want, so they take a little of every- thing. When they reach the end of the line and discover their favorite foods,
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