48 hours until your next career move
By John Mullins
Have you ever seen Vuyo’s Wors? Okay, settle down people. Now that Vuyo, he is such a big dreamer! That’s if you can believe his granny in the popular television advert. What I love about the ad is how it shows this ordinary guy making it big in his life. He is described as a big dreamer, but he also starts out small and works his way up until he truly reaches the stars.
But you’re not Vuyo, right? You’re just sitting there wondering how do I get my dreams to come true? How can I shake this feeling of patchiness in my life? Why am so clear on what I want in my life, but I can’t seem to get it to happen?
Why the blazers did I read The Secret? These are all very important questions to ask as you contemplate your way around another start to a week that’s bound to be filled with dramas, dangers and dilemmas.
So, what’s the answer smarty pants? I hear you thinking to yourself. This is where you start your imaginary drum roll, as I am about to reveal the answer.
Live the dream, don’t chase it. Okay, even I admit it sounds a little soft, but the truth is that’s what the real secret is.
You see. The mistake some people make is that they dream of a future for themselves and sit back wishing for it to happen.
Others dream a future for themselves and get stuck in the hustle of chasing every opportunity to get there quickly. While somewhere, and I know this place exists because successful people seem to know about it, others dream and calmly begin a patient journey towards the dream, living as if it were meant to be.
Let’s make this practical, and see how it works in every day job land. Let’s start with the lazy dreamers. They will talk about everything they want to be, or will become in the future, but complain that nothing good ever happens for them.
They seem stuck in jobs they hate, and can’t see any way out. Then we have the frantic dreamers. They will explain what they want, and then proceed to jump around from chance to opportunity getting tangled in a web of self deception and sometimes delusion that they are doing the right things to live the life of their dreams.
They appear to have energy, but it’s often misplaced, and before you know it, their dream has changed. Then you get the authentic dreamer. They know that what they want is like destiny. It’s not something they have to convince themselves of. It is so ingrained in them, that they live as if it was already happening.
Because they calmly and confidently know they are on the right path, they can sit back and develop detailed and manageable plans.
They don’t try to jump from here to there in one step. And they certainly don’t sit back hoping that the future happens despite them. They make career moves in a systematic and calculated fashion. And often they talk about setting goals that you can throw just a few feet in front of you.
That way you know where you’re going with small steps, not giant leaps that can be scary. I call it the 48 hour action plan.
And this is how it works. You dream your future. You make sure this is a future you can sustain with natural and honest behaviour.
It’s not something you will have to fake. Once that’s in place, you start connecting the dots backwards to where you are now. Just like Steve Jobs told a bunch of students some years back.
Those dots are simply a sequence of 48 hour goals that you set yourself.
Let’s put it to the test. Let’s say you want a new job. It may be a big change from where you are now. Getting there will require a whole range of things that must happen.
Trust yourself. You will get to all of them. But focus only on the next 48 hours. Which things can you do in that time?
That’s all you should focus on. So, in this case, your new job could mean having to get a new qualification that could take 3 years of study.
Your 48 hour goal is to simply register for the course, and gather information about the programme. Done! Then you’ll be ready for the next 48 hours.
Now you go try it. Remember your next career move is only a few days away.
Your next career move
Getting to a job you want requires planning and strategy. Even if you have a big audacious dream of your future, it can be worked on today.
Set 48 hours goals, as opposed to only focusing on the big dream.
The distance between where you are today, and where you will be is a series of 48 hour goals.
Plan your next 48 hours, evaluate that, and plan the next 48 hours.
Keep your dream in mind taking the small steps with confidence