A lot of students and early professionals feel that they are stuck in their careers and can’t find a way out. Don’t you feel the same sometimes? Yes, we have all been there.
But then as Steve Jobs rightly remarked – “You can’t connect the dots in future, you can only look back and connect the dots.” You have to take initial steps with belief and hope that it is going in the right direction.
Being comfortable with ‘ambiguity’ is something that a professional has to attain if she really wants to grow high and exceed expectations. However, even within ambiguity, there can be a direction. And this direction can be set through a planned “Visioning” technique.
Visioning as a technique is adopted by most of the leaders across the world, either knowingly or inadvertently as a habit.
In fact, there are two key characteristics that separate the most successful people from the rest – Visioning and Perseverance. While the former stands for deciding your goal, the latter stands for staying put towards your path.
Here we propose a simple framework, which can be used either in the vanilla form or with modifications as per your own dreams to plan your career.
Step #1 – Make 5 columns on a blank page – Financial, Professional, Family, Personal, Social
You may make more columns in case you can further divide the areas of your goals.
Download our Vision Plan document here.
Step #2 – Write down your goals for the next 5 years in each of these columns
For example, your personal goal can be to ‘release a fiction novel ‘or ‘get six packs abs’. Write down all that you think you should achieve in the next 5 years.
Step #4 – Write down dates when you have achieved the goals right next to each goal
For example,
Get USD 100000 in my bank account by 31st Dec 2021, ‘Get six pack abs’ by ‘27th March 2019’. It is up to you what date you take. Maybe some of these may be your gifts to yourself on your birthdays.
Step #5 – Place this chart where you can see it daily and listen to your mind
This step is very critical. In order to harness the power of visioning, you have to give your mind constant reminders as to what you want to look like in the next 5 years. Once you do that, it automatically develops identifies a gap between your present situation and your aspired status. And it starts throwing suggestions in order to bridge that gap. This is where you have to listen.
Step #6 – Follow all positive thoughts that come to your heart as a result of this
Two kinds of thought can come when you see this chart. Some thoughts make you feel small against your dreams. While this may be disheartening sometimes, I suggest you hold on since this is actually the energy that is trying to pull you out of ‘mediocrity’ and into the land of ‘experimentation’.
The second kind of thoughts are the positive thoughts – write these thoughts on a piece of paper as they contain cues to the solution to your problems. Keep watching your mind for such suggestions and follow the ones which connect to your heart.
Step #7. Persevere, persevere, and persevere
This is the last but the most important step as most dreamers fail in this very step and thus are not able to achieve what they want. Remember that in any endeavor, it is not the first step that works, but it requires modifications, changes, sometimes even scrapping the whole thing and restarting, but one thing is sure – it works in the end.
The biggest key is to hold on to your dreams and persevere, no matter what happens. It is okay to take some breaks and ease out when moving is hard, but your vision document will keep reminding you of your dreams keep you directed and focused.
Write to us if you have some dreams and want to make a vision plan.
