Dreams of how things could be are wonderful things. They give us something to aim for, and they serve as a blueprint for what our world could become. But for far too many people, those dreams will never see the light of day. Why? Because a vital piece of the equation is missing: action.

Dream-building sounds like exotic, airy stuff, but nothing could be further from the truth. Dream-building happens in the mundane, day-after-day steps you take. Some of those steps are energizing, and some of those steps are just things you need to get done. But they all have one thing in common – they must be taken.

When you take care of the steps, the dream will take care of itself. One way to make sure you keep taking the action you need to take is setting process goals.

The tougher the job market, and the longer you’re out of work, the more likely it is that you'll be nervous at job interviews.

This is bad because the key to successful job interviewing is to be relaxed enough to relate, on a human level, to your potential employer. Job hunting is all about selling, and selling is all about making an authentic human connection. Yes, it’s true, a lot of career (and life) success comes down to chemistry.

But fret not: you can ace the whole chemistry thing if you teach yourself to think of your interview, not as a test you’re terrified you’re going to fail, but as a conversation. This means:

There are plenty of ways to think about work. For many people, it is just something you do to make enough money to have some fun, go fishing, or party-hearty. I understand that.

For others, it's just something you do to make enough money to cover the basic necessities of family life. Nothing more.

Given that you're a reader of U.S.News, I am guessing you are neither, and that you want more out of your work life--whatever "more" is for you.

The vast majority of resumes I see read like a series of job descriptions, listing duties and responsibilities at each position the job applicant has held. But resumes that stand out do something very different. For each position, they answer the question: What did you accomplish in this job that someone else wouldn't have?

So sure, it's great that you were hired for a job with, you know, a job description. But what I want to know is what you did with that job. Did you just go through the motions and turn in an acceptable, but not particularly star-quality, performance? Or did you do an unusually good job, one that impressed your boss and coworkers and made them devastated to lose you?

The typical advice about resumes suggests showing what you accomplished by using numbers -- "increased sales by 40 percent," "instituted cost efficiencies that reduced overhead by 20 percent," or whatever. But what if you have a job where what made you great isn't numerically quantifiable?

I received an inaccurate performance appraisal from my incompetent manager and I wrote a detailed response (actually, longer than the original appraisal). I have some questions:

• Is it likely that the company will change the review rating?
• How does HR feel about employees who submit review responses?
• Even if the ratings are not changed, will the fact that I wrote a coherent, objective response be noted in my manager's HR file?
• My husband is a manager at a big company. He tells me HR is not my friend, that that they will protect my manager before me. Is this true?

I don’t know you, your manager, or your company policies, so this is going to be a general answer--your mileage may vary.

Changing the rating: It’s likely that your company has a formal review process. Just writing a response will not get a rating changed. You’ll have to officially request a review and a hearing. Will it get changed? I’ve seen it happen, but more often then not, the answer is no. Employees are often the worst judges of their own behavior. I’ve never had an employee say, “Gee, I’m average or below average.” Every employee thinks they are above average. This, of course, cannot be true.

I recently had a conversation with a woman who was unhappy in her job. As we talked about whether it made sense to think about changing careers, she echoed a common refrain: “I’m just lucky I have a job in this economy.”

Is she fortunate to have a job? Yup. But being lucky to have a job and having the ability to set in motion the wheels of a career change have nothing to do with each other. Most of the successful career transitions I have seen have unfolded over the course of many months, even years. Which means you don’t have to jump ship to get started.

Let’s say you realize you’re on the wrong path, and you decide it’s time for a change. You may not be in a position to jump into something new right now, but you are in a position to start taking steps.