Are You Missing Critical Ingredients to Your Success?

Imagine that you’ve been charged with baking the cake for your best friend’s birthday party. As you get started, you realize that you’re out of both eggs and oil. Sure, you can make improvisations, but if you’re not careful, what will come out of the oven won’t be a cake at all, and you could be single-handedly responsible for ruining your best friend’s special day.

Okay, so maybe that was a little dramatic, but every good cook knows how important it is to do a quick inventory of the kitchen to ensure that you have all the critical ingredients needed for your planned menu. Can you really expect the meal to be scrumptious if half of what you need is missing?

As you look at the goals you’ve set for your career or business, have you taken inventory of the ingredients that are critical to your success? If not, you just might be setting yourself up for disappointment. Even worse, you’ll probably beat yourself up at the end of the year for not working hard enough or exercising enough discipline. Leaving the cake in the oven longer won’t make up for a lack of eggs or oil, just like working harder isn’t necessarily the solution for not having the resources or environment necessary to reach your goals.

In the Bible, what I believe to be the best business and personal development book on the market, it even talks about how foolish it would be to start building a tower without first calculating the cost to complete it. Could you imagine a Fortune 500 corporation holding a huge ribbon-cutting ceremony for a new facility, breaking ground, laying the foundation, and then realizing they don’t have the capital to complete it? Talk about sending stockholders through the roof!

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying all conditions have to be perfect before you pursue a goal. But using wisdom in the goal-setting process can help you identify and fill the gaps necessary to achieve success.

WRITE IT DOWN:

• What ingredients are CRITICAL to reaching your goals? Do you need more money? Additional hands on deck? Could a mentor or coach help you to shorten the learning curve and hold you accountable?
• Are acceptable substitutions available for any of these critical ingredients? If so, how might it impact your final results or timeline?

Don’t have a half-baked business or career plan. Find out what it takes to get what you want and put your plan in motion.