What do you believe is possible

Here’s a question for you! 

What do you believe is possible for you? In your career? And in the rest of your life? 

Here are some further questions that might help. 

• What careers did you dream of once, but haven’t done yet? 
• How much money do you really believe you could earn? Some people find it revealing to replace “could” with “deserve to”. 
• What level of job do believe you could do? 

NOTE: money and level of job do not equate to success unless that is how YOU define success.

• How much balance is it possible (do you deserve) to have between work and all the other aspects of your life?
• What else do you believe about yourself and the world? Are those beliefs helping or hindering you right now? 

A lot of what we believe about the world we developed a long time ago, often as we were growing up. Whenever it was, accept that there was a very good reason for it then, whether it was from things people around us consistently said, to cope with a particular set of circumstances, or something else. 

Are your beliefs still relevant?

It was useful then, but how often do you question whether it's still useful to you? Let me give you an example. 

When I was young I can remember performing in plays and playing my guitar in front of audiences. I don’t remember that as being a big deal then. At some point though, I developed a belief that this was a scary thing to do, get up in front of an audience, and that somehow I might “get it wrong” or be ridiculed. So by the time I was in my early career there’s no way I’d have stood up in front of an audience, facilitated a workshop or anything else like that. 

I didn’t know what I know now, back then, but I was lucky in that somewhere along the line, through accident rather than design, I learnt to do it again. Now, I love talking to audiences about career and personal development - in a way, the bigger the better. 

If I had known back then, what I know now, maybe I would have changed that negative belief about what I could do earlier. Which leads me to another important point. 

Learn from the past but don't dwell there

We can’t change the past. We can learn from it, but it is a waste of energy to look back with your “if only I’d …. “ hat on. 

The only moment you can actually change anything is right now. That’s why its called the present - its a gift for us to do whatever we want with. Maybe that’s a bit twee or cliched, but it is, actually, spot on.

So the question is, what are you going to do right now, with this present? Are you going to carry on operating with outdated beliefs or are you going to decide what would be useful for you to believe in order to create the career and life you want? 

What new possible do you want to create?

If you want help, you know where I am. A good first step might be to find a trusted friend or colleague and set up some time for you to help each other and hold each other accountable for taking action on this. 

After all, if your career (or any other aspect of your life) is not as you want it, why would you choose to keep it the same?