Designing Careers With Visualization

This is designing careers the awesome way! Forget the stuffy careers centre and mounds of literature. Visualization is a way to ‘try before you buy’ different potential futures. This leads to new perspectives, clarity about what you really want and self knowledge about how to become the person of your most fulfilling career.

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What is visualization?

Visualization is a creative process for seeing things in a new way. When designing careers it can help us gain a fresh perspective. Think of visualization as like a camera that can take a snapshot of any possible future career.

Memories are like a snapshot of a particular time in the past. Can you remember a time when you were really happy? Now if you close your eyes and step into that memory you can see what you saw, hear what you heard and feel what you felt.

Visualization is just like this but for the future. Instead of remembering your imagination will draw on aspects of past experiences to create new possibilities.

How does this help with designing careers?

If you are a day-dreamer you will probably find visualization comes quite naturally. For the more analytical types this can sound a little ungrounded. So here are some of the concrete benefits to being a little creative with designing careers.

Creative planning is holistic. In contrast logical thought tends to be very reductionist. Logic puts ideas in ‘boxes’, makes distinctions and draws conclusions. This is a useful process, but like anything has its limitations.

Being analytical is like a colouring book with the picture outlines already drawn. You get to choose which picture to colour and which colours to use. However, your choices are limited to the outlines that already exist.

By contrast visualization is like having a blank piece of paper. The possibilities for the picture you create are endless!

Visualization is a holistic way of considering possible career choices. By creatively ‘unpacking the boxes’ and considering everything together you gain new perspectives, and see different possibilities.

Neither the colouring book nor the blank piece of paper is better than the other. It is by using both you have the greatest freedom.

The Benefits of Visualization

Clarity
In complicated situations where career objectives are tangled with other issues like personal relationships or money issues, it is can feel like being trapped in a maze. You can choose to go left or right, but you have no way of knowing where the exit is or even what it would look like if you were there.

Visualization is the chance to step out of your situation and see things from a different perspective. This is like floating up out of the maze and looking down on the whole puzzle from above. It becomes easier to see potential the exits and so decide how to move forward.

Try before you buy
When designing careers a world of possibility is available to you. Visualization can be a way to step into each of those different options.

This is like trying on a pair of jeans before you buy them. You get to see how they fit and so make an informed decision. There are no refunds with work decisions, so this type of information is particularly valuable when designing careers.

Inspired Communication
How you communicate your dreams to other people directly affects your ability to achieve them. It could be sales, motivating a team, getting a bank loan or any other aspect of finding support for success.

Visualization makes your career objectives career objectives more real. The difference between your experience of a memory and a visualization is minimal. The memory is your interpretation of what did happen. You visualization is your interpretation of what could happen.

Having visualized and committed to a career objective you can speak with fresh passion and excitement as if that future had just been realised. This is infinitely more inspiring for your audience than your present situation of lack.

Preparation

So for this exercise we are going to consider: what is your ideal average work day?

This is not about your career highlights or that fact that right now all you want to do is lie on a beach and do nothing.

This is about the everyday authentic success that you would like to experience in your career continuously. The visualization will start as you wake up and then proceed through the whole day until you go to bed.

It is likely that you are currently experiencing some challenges in life at the moment, so it may take some time to work things out and live in your perfect day. So pick a timeframe that feels comfortable to you, maybe 3, 5 or 10 years. It is not a race, so just pick a number that feels good to you.

For me, I think with 10 years of dedicated focus I could achieve pretty much any career goal. The main challenge is expanding my thinking enough to create a career objective so big that it would take the whole 10 years!

Your Ideal Average Day

Remember there is no right or wrong, with this exercise. It is an experiment. In a shop you will try on and discard more pairs of jeans than you actually buy. In fact you may try on some outrageous and stupid trousers just for fun! Through practise and trial & error you will zoom in on a day in the life of your most fulfilling career.

So take it easy and gently stroll through the following steps:

1) Relaxation:
Close your eyes (after you’ve read the exercise!) and take a few deep breaths

2) Into the visualization:
In a moment you are about to step forward in your mind’s eye to the timeframe you picked. There you have crafted a life that fulfils your top values has been crafted. It gives you freedom, self-expression and fulfilment.

It is now the morning of your average ideal day and you wake up.

Take a moment to look around, where are you? What do you see? Which sounds can you hear? How are you feeling?

What happens next? And after that, what happens during your ideal average work day?

3) Questions to ask your future self
Looking back from your ideal average work day, what events lead you to this point?

Standing in your ideal average work day, what advice would you give to the person doing this visualization exercise and considering this possibility for their future career?

4) Back from the Future!
Come back to the room gently, notice your body, have a stretch, and when you are ready open your eyes.

Take time to relax and reflect on the experience and write down any thoughts or impressions.

• What stood out most you?
• Where can this be applied to your present situation?
• How did you experience yourself?
• In which ways is this different to how you experience yourself usually?

Using This Visualization

Experiment with exercise as much as you like. Though remember it is a practical tool for designing careers, not an excuse to start living in a fantasy world. Keep focused on how your visualizations can help you make decisions, stay motivated and take action today.

These are two practical ways to be proactive with visualization:

Committing to Career Objectives
You have tried on a possible ideal day for size. Does it fit what you really want? Where does it express your top careers values? How could it be even more fulfilling?

Try designing careers with different ideal days and different timeframes so you can compare and contrast your experiences. Through this process you can fine tune the future you really want. This clarity will inspire your commitment and action towards achieving it.

Becoming Who You Really Are
Consider: who are you being in your visualizations when you are most fulfilled? How does this compare with who you are being today?

In the possible future you might be an expert, confident, and happy but today experience being ignorant, shy and miserable. Where there is a gap in who are being then look at creating a personal development plan. Your goals will be achieved when you are being the type of person that does and has those things.

Visualization is an access point for uncovering self-knowledge about who you really are. It is a creative process that gives you a blank sheet of paper to create new possibilities for our career. This is useful in clarifying your career objectives, becoming more of who you really are, being inspired and inspiring as you move towards them. So enjoy this most awesome way of designing careers for your fulfilment.

Find more tools for crafting your career objectives.

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