What do you want from your dream career? (page 1/3)
"Choose a job you love, and you will never have to work a day in your life." Confucius
Pretty powerful words from Confucius – and to many people this may seem like an impossible dream. If you are one of those people, then take a few moments right now to free your mind.
Perhaps you already know what your dream career is? But perhaps there are other careers that you haven’t yet thought of which could stimulate and excite you even more?
Find a comfy chair in your favourite room, unplug the telephone, turn off the mobile, and imagine yourself working in your dream career. Right now – go and do it!
What we're going to be constructing over the next minutes, hours, days is your career blueprint - your set of plans which will help you to achieve and succeed in your dream career!
Exercise 1
So, are you imaging that you are, right now, IN your dream career? Think as hard as you can about what you are actually DOING!
- Perhaps you are a marketing executive in a key meeting? If so, are you leading the meeting, or reporting to the CEO? What are you discussing? Your work or someone else’s? Where is the meeting? On a factory floor or on the 24th floor of the most prestigious office block in town?
- Perhaps you are a product designer? If so, are you designing the whole product, or just part of it which will integrate with the designs of others? Are you designing a product which will be launched in months, or is a concept design which will change significantly before being launched in years to come?
Now lets choose an extreme ‘dream career’ to illustrate a point.
Perhaps you want to be a motor-yacht salesman in the Cayman Islands? Sure that must be a dream career for many people, but try now (in your comfy chair) to immerse youself in what exactly it is which you find appealing about this job.
- Do you like selling luxury goods to well-heeled people? If so, are there other careers which could provide this? Perhaps selling luxury cars or jewellery? Or you could be an estate agent specialising in high value houses?
- Do you like being around motor yachts? If so, perhaps you could train to be a skipper taking people on motor yacht holidays? Or you could be an instructor to teach new owners how to get the most out of their expensive purchases?
- Or perhaps it is the outdoor life that is particularly appealing? What about being the membership manager of an exclusive tennis club or golf club on the Mediterranean?
Whether or not you wanted to be a motor-yacht salesman in the Med or not, the point of this exercise was to force you to dissemble what exactly it is you are looking for in your dream career. It has also shown how, even if you have an idea of what your dream career may be, that there may be other careers out there RIGHT NOW which would suit your desires AS MUCH as if not MORE THAN your first choice!
There is a second step to this process, and this is slightly harder. But whoever said that working out what you want – what you really want – was easy? Remember – we’re trying to work out what you want to do for your living!! Remember the quotation from Confucius – we’re not trying to find you a job to go to work to each morning, but a living which you can fulfil each morning WITHOUT IT FEELING LIKE WORK!!
|
