As kids, we all have dreams and aspirations for what we want to do when we grow up. However, as we get older, we tend to put down our dreams to pursue “reality” - or what we perceive is reality. Those dreams we had no longer fit into what we consider realistic. Years ago when I first started Happen To Your Career, my good friend Mark and I created an 8-Day mini-course to help people begin to figure out what they really wanted to be doing for their career and their life. We’ve now had over 25,000 people go through that mini-course. One of the exercises in that course involves declaring 3 wildly unrealistic things you want to do, be or become these could be occupations, jobs, roles, whatever you wanted, Sky’s the limit. The only rule is that it has to be wildly unrealistic. We started getting thousands of responses emailed to us and there was something interesting that we noticed right away. They’re all big goals sure, but what else? None of them are actually impossible or unachievable. What does this tell us? It means that the things we believe to be wildly unrealistic are only unrealistic because we believe them to be. It’s about the story that we tell ourselves. How do people actually accomplish wildly unrealistic goals especially when you have reality standing in your way, like a full time job or obligations like kids that like to eat, or saving for their college. Or the simple fact that you have only so much energy in a single day before you pass out? Reality. We all have our current reality. This might come from obligations, parents, kids, work, serving on that board that you agreed to back before you realized how much time it was going to take, yes it’s for a good cause but maybe you didn’t actually think it would be an additional 20 hours a month. Whatever your reality is. All of us have it. The question becomes: How do you accomplish career and life goals that you might consider to be wildly unrealistic when “reality” is always pressing on us? When you set out to achieve wildly unrealistic goals you can always assume the path you follow will be the one less taken. This is, of course, also true with wildly unrealistic career changes!

Allison and I continue to delve deeper into the things that led to her career change (and changed her entire life, too!). As she completed the Clifton’s Strengthsfinder assessment during her CCB course, Allison discovered the formula for her own career happiness. She says: confidence + strengths + motion = dream career She began to imagine a career she could be passionate about. When asked the question, “What are some of the things you can’t stop doing?” Allison found herself responding, “I can’t stop asking people if they like their job.” This answer helped her see that she was obsessed with career fulfillment. For five or six years, she had been showing interest in others’ career success. Even when she was shifting gears with her job title, she kept asking people whether or not they loved their work.   “Looking back at the big picture, even though my jobs were so different, every single job, whether it was part of the role or not—if it was just interactions with employees or how I felt about myself in that position—everything pointed to my dream job.”   Allison realized she was good at simplifying processes for people and creating new programs. She had fun communicating to people in a language they understood. When she thought about her signature strengths, she realized she could use all of these skills in helping others find fulfillment. Today, Allison is a professional career coach. She’s an entrepreneur living out her multipotentiality, and she can honestly say she’s discovered her dream career. Very few people will find career happiness in this life, whether it’s because they don’t believe it’s available to them or because they can’t identify what would even bring fulfillment, but Allison is living proof that you can do work you love and be paid well for it.