The Importance of Setting Goals

It's a good idea to always have something out there we're striving for. For Concorde students in health care training, it's attaining that diploma or degree or landing that health care career.

That involves the process of setting goals. Having that carrot to keep you motivated during your health care training.

But don't just take our word for it. Hear from some of our resident Concorde experts. They counsel students and graduates like you every day. They know the importance of setting goals and constantly striving to reach them. Here's a little bit of what they had to say.

A frame of reference in your health care training

"Goals provide us with a frame of reference for where we are going and what we want to accomplish," said Liane Pardo-Mansfield, Director of Student Affairs at Concorde's campus in Orlando, Fla. "We live in a society in which our attention is constantly being pulled in many directions. We can easily fall prey to social media tactics that focus our attention on seemingly irrelevant topics such as your career or financial planning.

"Setting goals provide not only structure to your day-to-day life, but an outline for what you seek to accomplish with your life as whole that will provide you with a sense of fulfillment and meaning."

Goals as a measurement in your health care training

"The advantage of a goal is that it can be wide, or narrow and can be very much personalized to an individual need," said Ian Kreeger, Graduate Employment Specialist at Concorde - Orlando. "Short or long term goals tend to aid us in judging how we're doing. They allow us to adjust behavior to reach the desired end."

There is a bell curve involved with new graduates in their first job following their health care training, Kreeger said. There is a proven path to success if a graduate sets both short and long term goals. Often, a graduate will be asked, "Where do you see yourself in the future?" Goals and the ability to meet them tell us a lot about ourselves and more importantly a lot about other people. Kreeger points out an old Arabic proverb that states that, "a man without goals is a person without dreams."

Summing up goals in health care training

Renel Gilles, Director of Student Affairs at Concorde's campus in Tampa, Fla., said he can sum up his thoughts on the importance of setting goals with quotes from inspirational gurus Zig Ziglar and Sidney Howard.

• "If you aim at nothing, you will hit it every time." - Ziglar
• "One half of know what you want is knowing what you must give up before you get it." - Howard

"The importance of setting up goals is vital to reaching any outcome," Gilles said. "In my view, goals are the stepping stones to success."