Ask yourself:
What do I want my career to look like?
What are the three to five significant outcomes I want to achieve?
How do I want to feel as I live it?
Why?
The truth is that your brain is your ally designed to support you in reaching the desires of your heart. Creation always starts first in the mind before it ever becomes a reality.
There’s magic in envisioning what you yearn to accomplish. Plug into this transformational force as you devise your future.
What we’re discussing here is not a “name it, claim it” philosophy. Instead, it’s a far steadier, quieter knowing. It’s tapping into who you are, why you’re here, and what you’ve dreamed of being.
Ignite this brainpower by envisioning, believing, and committing to your aspirations. In your mind’s eye, see yourself vividly experiencing the fulfilling, end-result before you even begin the journey.
Questions initiate the process. Spend quiet time imagining your career as though you’re living in the outcome right now. Once you obtain clarity, where you feel as though you’re encountering your future, start writing everything down in vivid, heart accelerating detail.
The upshot of this exercise generates Context Goals, which are far more compelling in drawing you into a profoundly, satisfying tomorrow than anything else you can do.
Don’t believe me?
Consider the last three to five goals you created, and begin to assess them from a new, broader perspective. Check to see if they may be Label Goals? Are they fact-based, rationally grounded, linear next steps thinking? If they are, these tend to be disempowering because they only address surface desires—nothing more than an empty descriptor.
Perhaps you’ve written something along the lines of: I want to be a senior executive of a Fortune 500 company within five years.
This is a Label Goal that stands for something you believe you will achieve when you reach your destination. It may even represent a gigantic, ambitious career leap for you.
What you may not recognize is you have certain expectations regarding how you will benefit or what you will gain once you realize the position. These underneath the label desires represent unconscious—often unspoken—wishes. The unconstructive aspect is when you win the label, yet don’t achieve fulfillment. This frustration leads to a downward spiral of career dissatisfaction and disengagement.
On the other hand, Context Goals take a deeper cut at achieving your dreams.
With Context Goals, you still identify your desired outcome, but you go on to describe why you want to reach it and what you will feel like when you do. Crafting such goals depends on being fiercely self-aware, and by asking tougher, more probing questions then you’ve ever sought before. It requires recognizing what your labels embody to you—not what you think you should want or what others think you should pursue—but what truly brings you fulfillment, inspiration, satisfaction, and joy. Don’t settle for anything less.
After all, it’s impossible to plot a course when you don’t know where you’re going. It would be as though you’re flying blind into your future, hoping you’ll reach the destination of your dreams. How effective is that?
