Are you clear on what it is that you want?

I have a question for you… What would you do if you knew time and money were not barriers and you had the support of the people around you and you knew you could not fail?

I notice people find this question very difficult to answer. The answers come back rather vague. If you are feeling desperate to escape your current work, you could end up looking for anything that seems an improvement on what you are currently doing. This is a very short term solution and the wrong starting point. You are not coming from a place of what you truly want but what you think you can GET.

This is a big difference! Have you been compromising?

When you are considering making a career change it is important you put aside all practicalities at the start and dream. There is plenty of time to focus on the “how” once you have an idea of what you want. A dream is simply something that you want, for some reason we seem to do less of it as we grow older. What were the things that you dreamt about doing as a child? I dreamt I would be an actress in a popular children’s television programme, being an air pilot and doctor. Okay, I’m not any of these things but the essence of these roles, are part of my career today.

For example, at the start of my career, I facilitated a lot of training courses and needed to engage and stimulate my audience. I do not fly planes but I love to fly and travel. I work in a career in which I help people. If you are stuck or find it really difficult to answer the question “What do you want?” John Williams in his book “Screw Work, Let’s Play “says that it is because you have not separated the question “What do I want?” from “What seems possible for me right now?” I totally agree with him.

Williams quotes Robert Fritz (composer, filmmaker and organisational consultant) “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want, and that is left is a compromise” It is important to note that there’s a difference between a dream and a fantasy.

In a dream you can actually design a strategy (plan) for getting there/achieving it.  However, something like winning the lottery is a fantasy – because there is nothing that you can do to ensure it's going to happen. If you never get to put a strategy in place for your dream it remains a fantasy or a nice idea. It’s important to ensure that you do not go to the planning ad strategic phase too early. This will cause you to compromise your dream down to what you realistically believe is possible. The impact of this is that when you talk about what is possible you end up playing small. You owe it to yourself not to play small.

We have all been given gifts so that we can make an impact on the world. The whole idea behind dreaming is to get you to swing outside of just being realistic. It’s back to the question at the start of the article is “if time and money weren't issues and you had the support of the people around you, or even if you knew you could not fail, what would you do? “

• We have a realistic part of ourselves, and I think that reality is an important part of the mix.
• You have to know where you are in order to design the strategy for where you want to go, but the question is, what has being realistic cost you?

Without dreams, all we have is reality, and although reality is not a bad thing, it can actually squash our passion and leave us to make compromises. Without our personal dreams, vision, goals, hopes, and desires, life can become … I guess I could say at best boring, stagnant, and mundane, way before its time. Dreaming is the driving force of transformation, Kennedy dreamt of getting a man on the moon, The Wright Brothers dreamt of flying planes, Roger Bannister dreamt of running a mile within 4 minutes.