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Find the Right Career for You: Tips to Create Your Vision for Long Lasting Fulfillment

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Happy New Year! It’s 2015 and you’ve picked your resolution for the New Year!

You haven’t felt fulfilled at work for a long time now. So you’ve resolved to finally answer the question you stay awake in bed thinking about: What do I really want to do with my life? What career will make me truly happy?

2015 is going to be your year. You’re going to figure out what you want to do, and then, somehow, you’re going to find a way to make it happen. You’re committed. You want this. You’ve wanted this for years. You know 2015 is going to be your year!

You’re wondering where to begin. You’ve read What Color is Your Parachute? and countless other books promising to help you figure out the best career for you. Yet, you’re still not sure what you really want to do.

Before you start taking action, looking for a new job, planning your escape route, it’s time to get clear on the positive, inspiring vision you’re looking forward to bringing to life. It’s time to figure out what you really want to do with your life.

In this article I’m going to offer a few prompts to help you think about this question in a new way. My hope is there’s at least one that you haven’t seen before that will give you the jump start you’re craving.

But first, imagine this…

 

Picasso_Choose A Life You Love_Becky Emet

 

Like Picasso said, the meaning of life is to find your unique gift—that thing you do that lights you up, that you feel good doing, that utilizes your unique strengths and talents. But that’s not all Picasso was saying. He’s also suggesting that life cannot reach its full potential if you know your true gift but do not share it with the world.

Your job is not to live anyone else’s life. It is to give yourself room to live yours! Your job is to let yourself live YOUR life.

Before I offer prompts to help you figure out what your true calling really is, three quick notes to help you get the most out of this article:

1) As you get started, it’ll be important not to limit yourself to thinking just about your career. In this imaginary future you’re going to start envisioning, you’re living a whole life you absolutely love! So try your best to think more broadly than just career.

2) After you read through these prompts you’ll see that I recommend getting started by using just one or two of the prompts.

3) You’ll see that after I offer up prompts to get you mind going, farther down in this post, I offer tips on how to actually begin working with them. In my work with my coaching clients I’ve found that this process seems deceptively easy, but can instead be quite challenging for most people. After all, if figuring out what you wanted to be doing with your life was easy, you’d have figured it out years ago!!!

 

 

6 Prompts for to help you start envisioning a life you love and discover the career path for you:

Prompt A: Imagine yourself 10 to 15 years in the future, living a life you truly love…

  • What are you doing?
  • What are you thinking about?
  • How do you feel emotionally, physically, spiritually?
  • What else is happening in your life?
  • For what do you feel most grateful?
  • Where are you?
  • Who, if anyone, is with you?

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Prompt B: If you knew you could do anything, and you were guaranteed to succeed, what would you do?

Prompt C: What is the number one thing you want to have happen in your life in the next 10 years?

Prompt D: Imagine if all of a sudden you found out you only had one year to live… What would become your highest priority?

Prompt E: If you were forced to take a year off, to spend a year away from family and friends, from your home and your routine, and you were given an unlimited budget, what would you spend your time doing?

Prompt F: What if there was one thing you had to do for at least 3 hours a day, every day, for the rest of your life? What’s one thing you can imagine maybe making the cut?

 

 

Once you find one or two that feel like they suggest taking a perspective you haven’t yet taken, here are 7 Steps to help you work with the one or two prompts you select:

1. Before you get started you may find it helpful to pull out some plain paper, lined paper or a journal, pencils, pens, and markers. Imagine if you were about to run a meeting and ask everyone present to just start brainstorming. Bring out all the “tools” you’d offer to help get brains going and help loosen things up enough to start playing with a whole range of ideas. This is what you’ll be doing as you get started—playing. You don’t need to find the answer during the first 10 minutes you sit down to respond to your prompt. In fact, you probably won’t. Your objective is to let your mind play, to let yourself imagine possibilities.

2. Use a prompt that feels fun for you, a prompt which you started to answer as soon as you read it, so you can create a positive atmosphere in which you can do your visioning exploration. This process can feel exciting, inspiring, filled with hope and possibility. It can also feel scary at times. So, I can’t overstate how important giving yourself freedom to just play and have fun will be at this first stage. If there are prompts that feel harder, there’s no need to use them. The old adage works here: take what you like and leave the rest.

3. As you imagine your vision becoming real, allow yourself to be in the scene, to imagine it has already come true. Allow yourself to feel yourself in your imagined future. Allow yourself to believe it’s possible, even to believe it’s already begun to happen. This is the place where you’ll spend a bulk of your time. Don’t be fooled by the easy explanation. Really let yourself spend at least 20 minutes on this one!

4. Notice any negative thoughts that come up when you first start imagining a potential future for yourself. It’s important that you not judge yourself for having negative thoughts. It’s natural that they come up. Your task at this point is to notice them. Notice any thoughts of self-doubt, second guessing, self-judgment, worry, fear, half-empty thinking, etc. Here are a few common road blocks many of my clients choose to set aside:

  • But I don’t know how I’d ever be able to do this
  • I’m not good enough
  • My partner/parent/child/friend/colleague wouldn’t like this
  • I don’t know if I have what it takes to do this
  • This feels impossible. I’d better not get my hopes up.
  • But I already spent all that time and money to study and work in a totally different field
  • I’ll never be able to make a living doing that

Visioning is the first step in choosing a career you love, in building a life you find truly fulfilling. Once you get clear on what it is you want to do with your life, then the work will become figuring out what it will take to get you there. But you’ve got to do this first step first.

5. Create a container into which you’ll be able to set aside any negative thoughts that happen to arise. This can be as simple as taking a piece of paper, writing “Negative stories I want to let go of” at the top of it, and then recording any negative thoughts that arise on that one sheet. Or, like some of my clients choose to do, you can use an old tissue box as your negative thought “trash can.” Anytime a negative thought comes up, creating a container like this will allow you to acknowledge it, write it down, and then release it by putting it to the side into its container. (For more on increasing positivity and releasing negativity, check out my blog post on 7 Steps to Becoming a More Positive Person in 2015.)

6. Create a reminder for yourself of why you’re choosing to do this. What’s your motivation for trying to figure out what will make you feel truly fulfilled in life? Is it that you don’t want to feel like you’ve wasted any more time?

Your reminder might end up looking something like one of these:

  • The how will come later. Right now I need to focus on what I want. Once that’s clear, I promise I will figure out the how.
  • I will take action. I just need to do this first.
  • I don’t want to waste time heading in wrong direction. Life is too short.
  • I have to go all in. I have to dream big! I saw what happens when I don’t let myself and I don’t want to do that anymore. I’m done with that. Now I’m choosing to put everything I’ve got into trying to build a life I actually really love.
  • I don’t want a quick fix. I’m going to put in the work because this time I want the real thing. I want the next steps I take to be towards a career that will last!

Create a reminder that works for you. Write it down. And put it someplace where you won’t be able to ignore it!

7. Respond to the one or two prompts you select in any way you’d like. Just let yourself experiment and find a way that feels fun, inspiring, and energizing for you. Scribble down freely associated thoughts, talk to yourself out loud, draw stick figures, type up a list, play on your computer in Word, Excel, or PowerPoint, move your body, shake things up. Do whatever ends up working for you. You may begin to think about the exercise as creating your very own recipe for the secret sauce you might use to create a life you love. Find what works for you and go for it!

 

 

If you notice yourself resisting the visioning process, if the idea of “dreaming” seems frivolous, or if you notice yourself doing anything and everything you can before sitting down to get really clear on exactly what it is you want, (i.e., taking out the trash, watering the plants…) try thinking through these journaling prompts:

  • What is the point of figuring out my dream? Of figuring out what would bring me deep and lasting fulfillment?
  • What’s in it for me if I put in the effort now to figure this out?
  • What’s the risk if I don’t do this work?
  • What’s the risk if I do put in the time to try to figure this out?
  • What about doing this feels scary?
  • What’s holding me back?
  • What’s making it feel easier not to do the visioning work?
  • Do I truly want to figure this out?
  • If I do want to figure this out for myself, what am I going to do to make sure I see this through? What actions will I take today and this week to propel me forward along this soul searching journey?
  • What do I need to remind myself of every day in order to feel motivated to see this through?

 

 

I wish you the best as you embark on your vision quest! It may be a bumpy ride. But I encourage you to stick with it until you find your answers!

Leave a comment and let us all know what ends up working for you, where you hit road blocks, questions you have, new prompts you’ve designed that ended up working better for you.

These steps won’t work immediately for everyone. If you find yourself getting stuck at any stage, reach out. I’m happy to help you get to the next level!

~Becky

 

 

Becky Emet, MSW, MBA

Career Coach | Life Coach

Choose A Life You Love founder

Email Becky today to schedule a FREE coaching consultation to learn more about how coaching can help you choose a life you love at info@ChooseALifeYouLove.com

An Invitation to Choose A Life You Love

 

“Choose A Life You Love” isn’t just a catchy phrase, it’s an invitation.

 

So what does that even mean? What would that look like, for someone to choose a life they love?

I’m going to start by saying something you’d surely guess I’d say first: Choosing a life you love is a process that looks different for everyone, but it always starts in the same place. Can you guess where it starts?

The first step for so many is so simple, but for so many has been one of the scariest. The first step is clarifying, owning, naming that which makes you truly happy. Even if it’s something you fear other people wouldn’t “get,” even if it’s something that doesn’t feel “grown up,” even if it would mean facing your greatest fears, the first step is the most crucial, and luckily, one of the most empowering. It takes real honesty and real courage.

What is it that fulfills you? Inspires you? Gets you to smile spontaneously? When you’re not worried about what anyone else might think, how do you most want to spend your time? Do you love to sing? For you does true joy come when you write poetry? Do you love every moment you spend on your boat and spend every other minute waiting for the weekend when you can head back out on the water again? Is your definition of happiness spending time with dogs or babies? Perhaps for you it’s the moments you get to spend time in your studio alone, just you, the music you’ve chosen playing in the background, paint brush in hand…

Choosing a life you love can be scary because it means you’ve got to be really honest about whether or not you love the life you have. It means you’ve got to be willing to admit you have dreams. It also means you’ve got to be willing to face the fears you have that “dreams don’t always come true,” that you might not have financial security, that you might fail, that people might even watch and see.

When you commit to choosing a life you love each and every day, you’re making a pledge to hold each day as sacred, to remember that we’re never guaranteed a “do-over.” You’re saying, “Yes! I’m worth it!” You’re putting your faith in yourself, in your ability to dream, and in your ability to take action to make those dreams come true.

Sometimes it can feel like a “leap of faith,” a jump into the unknown. But there comes a time when spending another day just like you spent yesterday no longer feels like an option.

“And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom.” – Anais Nin

At 25, when my mom passed away, life as I knew it ended, and as an only child to a single mom with whom I was incredibly close, I felt I’d lost my “sense of north,” my sense of purpose. When I turned 30, I got so incredibly ill that there were a few months when I thought I might be dying. There have been plenty of other events throughout the years that have woken me up, have reminded me of just how precious life is and how privileged I am to be given each new morning. But it wasn’t until I saw myself working 60 hour weeks so stressed out that I would think about work even as I slept, so stressed that I spontaneously burst into tears in the office bathroom on more than one occasion, that I finally got my wake up call. This wasn’t me. This wasn’t the life I wanted. I cannot know if I’ll have another tomorrow. And I knew I didn’t want to lose any more of my todays.

And so a year ago I made a bold commitment to myself. I was scared. I was so scared. But I made this promise anyway. There was no stopping it really. I decided simply, that I want to be happy every day. That was my commitment: live my life in a way that welcomed in true happiness each and every day. I had no day to waste. This wasn’t something I could “get to on the weekend.” This was urgent. I was losing touch with myself. I was losing my zest for life, my playfulness, the joy that takes me over so completely that people can feel it from a block away. So, I decided to reclaim my life.

And for me, like it has for so many of my clients, it’s been a journey—a journey that started years and years ago, a journey into which I’ve breathed new life this past year.

I took a long look at what it really means for me to be happy every day. What were the core ingredients? I knew these wouldn’t be the same for me as they might be for others. And I committed to uncovering exactly what they were. The consultant side of me came out and I created a spider-web-like diagram in PowerPoint which laid out all the essential components of my plan. For me I knew that meant doing work that felt really fulfilling—not just some of the time, but all of the time—work that allowed me to offer my unique gifts to the world in a positive and inspiring way. I also knew being happy meant making sure I spent time everyday being physically active outdoors in a place I found truly beautiful. It meant lots of time for spiritual connection, friends, family, animals. It meant living in a way that brought out the silly, playful, creative, and loving parts of me. By the time I finished my visual, the vision I had of myself truly happy was so clear, I could see myself in the future so clearly, I could almost hear myself laughing!

Once I got clear about what happy every day looked like for me, I wanted it more than ever!

My next step was committing to being more disciplined in my Law of Attraction practice. Believing in the basic premise—that what we think about, what we fantasize, worry, or stress about, is exactly what we draw into our lives—I knew I had to be very careful about what I spent my time thinking about. I decided that I wouldn’t allow fear or my head propel me forward, that I would invite my heart to drive. I decided to have faith, to trust that if I spent my time doing things I truly loved, that the Universe would allow my life to unfold more beautifully than I could even imagine. I chose mindfulness each and every day. When I’d have a “second thought” I’d quickly inspect it to see if it was coming from a place of fear. Each time it was, I sent myself a little love, I watched with compassion, and then I set the fear aside. I’d reaffirm my practice and put all my energy into discovering what my heart was telling me, asking my heart what I wanted.

I started to develop my new vision for my life—which as it happened, wasn’t so different from all the visions I’d had at other points in my life. What was different this time around is that I was doing this as a conscious practice. I was getting specific about what I wanted, how I wanted to feel in my body, in my mind, in my heart. And I was staying focused on it, without letting distractions or other people’s expectations, or my own fears get me off track. I was focused, disciplined, determined!

And then came one of the most important things I did, which is something I spend a lot of time working with my clients to do as well. I took action. I started doing what I loved. I had seen coaching clients privately even while holding other jobs, but the first time I saw a new client after my decision to just work for myself felt fulfilling in a new way. And designing and scoring and soldering my first piece of stained glass in the new studio I created for myself was life changing. With all the visioning I had done, with all the faith I had put out there into the Universe, the first steps I took really got things started. Within weeks I was already inspiring new coaching clients and receiving offers to be in my first art shows. The ball was rolling. I was doing it. I was putting fear aside. I was living a life I truly loved and I was watching my dreams come true, each and every day.

 

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Do you know what a life you truly love would look like? Do you know what you would be doing? Who else would be there? Where you would be? Can you feel it?

You don’t have to know how you’ll get there. And you don’t even have to believe it’s possible. And like so many others, you might even feel scared out of your mind! But, I invite you to start pondering that first question—what would it mean for you to choose a life you LOVE, not a life someone else would love, not a life you think you should love, but a life you truly love each and every day.

I invite you to join me in taking that first step and being really honest with yourself—because although it might be scary for you to think about, after seeing it work in my own life and for so many of my clients, I have complete faith that each and every one of us can live a life we love if we start by inviting ourselves to ask what a life we love would look like.

 

If you feel grateful to already be living a life you truly love, please share with us. What choices have you made that have helped you create a life you love?

Or if you’re not quite there yet but have a good sense of some of the ingredients you’d need to live a life you truly love, I invite you to share those too. Just the act of naming them can be powerful!

 

Wishing you a life you love today!

 

 

Becky

 

Becky Emet, MSW, MBA

Career Coach | Life Coach

Choose A Life You Love founder

 

***To learn more about Choose A Life You Love coaching click here or Contact Coach Becky .