Daydream your way to Career Success
9 May 2018
Claire 1 dreamed about career success. She dreamed about walking into the offices of the company she so wanted to work with. She dreamed about where her desk would be. She dreamed about the list of projects she would have. She dreamed about being invited to important meetings. She knew it would all be fabulous and just what she wanted.
Claire 2 also dreamed about career success. Yes, like Claire 1, she indulged in daydreams about the office and the important work she would do, but her real dreams about career success were different. When Claire 2 dreamed career success she dreamed about getting up a half hour early each morning with a warming hot chocolate and reading a couple of background articles in her area of work. She dreamed about clearing a space in her diary one afternoon a week to work exclusively and deeply on a new initiative. She dreamed about the questions she would float by her mentor.
Research shows the quality of the way Claire 2 dreamed about her career was much more likely to lead to success than the way Claire 1 dreamed about her career.
It turns out there is a substantial difference between the way people who are consistently successful daydream and those who are not so successful. This difference lies in if you are having outcome or process daydreams.
Claire 1 was having outcome daydreams. In her daydreams, she was already successful in her career and was enjoying the spoils – the office, the meetings, the interesting work.
Claire 2 was having process daydreams. Her daydreams were all about what she would have to do in order to achieve the end results – the getting up early, the diary organisation, the conversation planning.
The simple fact is that the daydreams of Claire 2 are substantially more likely to lead to action.
It isn’t easy to shift from outcome to process daydreams. It is deeply ingrained in us to be outcome focused. One place to start is by brainstorming and noticing the times and circumstances that most lead to you daydreaming about your career – maybe it’s during your morning shower, maybe it is during your lunch break, maybe it is always after a meeting with a certain person. Then at these times put cues into your environment that help you became conscious of capturing your wandering, daydreaming mind and examining the quality of its contents. Should you find the contents of your career daydream are outcome types more often than they are process types then shift your thinking again and again, then again and again.
As always wishing you a flourishing career.
Katherine