Making the Future Real | Moving Our Visions From our Minds Into the Real World

The most terrifying aspect of searching for work that is meaningful and fulfilling is the uncertainty: “I want to quit my job/take a sabbatical/earn money in a way that won’t burn me out, now what? What are the next steps? What do I do?” The paralysis analysis can be overwhelming. There is so many options to choose from, which one is the “right one”?

Join the Mary Bajorek, an Interintellect fellow, in her second installment of the 12-week journey of rehabilitating our work life in which we’ll discuss the benefits and challenges of having a vision for our lives (and what that actually means), narrow down all the possibilities into three “Future Maps,” and then pick an action to bring the visions into reality.

You’ve already take a look at the big picture of your life. You have your values in hand (if you don’t, check out this exercise), you know what you care about and what you don’t, but now what? How do you translate all that into some action you can take when there are so many options?

Let’s create three visions of different lives you could live and choose a small action to live each of them out.

Creating visions is hard. We don’t often look beyond the horizon of the next year or two (never mind five). But if we don’t know where we’re going and what we want, we will be lost. Visions are also not “plans” — they’re articulations of our dreams. They are maps that we draw with our highest hopes and work toward as our North Star.

Why is this important? The value of spending time in reflecting leads to both learning and strategic thinking, making sure that we’re seeing the big picture before taking actions down our own path. However, the overuse of reflection can lead to analysis paralysis and lack of confidence. The way to balance that out is to take action to get data and move our intentions forward. It’s not about picking the right path and getting it right, but choosing the next step, thinking about what feels right and then iterating on it. Taking a step forward and then assessing — always making it a little bigger and larger than the last one.

Join this salon to spend time articulating your vision(s) for your life, discussing the iterative and necessary relationships between reflection and action in the job search process, and choosing the next tangible action for your work search journey.

Activities:

• Future Mapping (create three versions of what your life could look like over the next five years)

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Cover Image by Nat Sharpe.