In November 2010, prompted by a suggestion in an email newsletter that I had subscribed to, I sat down and fleshed out the details behind the statement, “What my life will be like”.
I’m recording this episode knowing that it will be published on 1 January 2024.
As it’s a time of year when we often set aside some time for reflection and goal setting I thought it would be an ideal episode to share my experience of this exercise.
Often when we talk about Goal Setting, we are encouraged to set SMART goals. That is goals or objectives that are Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic and Time bound or some slight variation of the SMART acronym.
We are recommended to break them down into action steps and work out how we are going to measure our progress. Whilst this approach is well proven and effective, it can feel like a fair amount of work and be offputting. Sometimes so much so that we decide not to bother at all!
Unlike that approach, I'd say this exercise was fun. I'd even use the word playful. I use that word very deliberately because play is a behaviour we often consign to our childhood.
The exercise I am going to share with you allows or even requires us to use our imagination. Some of us find that easier than others.
The exercise encourages us to create in our imaginations how we would like our life to be.
When I did this, just over 13 years ago, I chose to focus on imagining my next career.
My end in mind for sharing this story is to encourage you to have some fun, unleash your imagination, reflect on your values, strengths and interests and in some way, shape or form capture that stream of consciousness about how your life will be in a document. That exercise will give you increased clarity and a sense of intentionality that will inform your decision making and actions.
And I hope that you will return to this document after an appropriate period of time to find that much of what you have wished for you have been able to create for yourself.
If you enjoy listening to our guests career stories, please follow CAREER-VIEW MIRROR in your podcast app.
Episode recorded on 29 December, 2023.
Ed Eppley:
I am sitting in lovely Siesta Key Florida.
Sherene Redelinghuys:
I'm coming from Bangkok in Thailand,
Daniel van Treeck:
Prague in the Czech Republic.
Osman Abdelmoneim:
Cairo in Egypt,
Holger Drott:
Auckland, New Zealand,
Shannon Faulkner:
London, England.
Andy Follows:
Welcome to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR, the automotive podcast that goes behind the scenes with key players in the industry looking back over their careers so far, sharing insights to help you with your own journey. I'm your host, Andy Follows. Hello, listeners, and welcome to this Side Mirror episode of CAREER-VIEW MIRROR. If you're a regular listener, thank you and welcome back, you'll be aware that most of our episodes feature interviews with people with a link to the automotive industry who kindly share their life and career journeys with us. We celebrate their careers listen to their stories and learn from their experiences. From time to time, we also publish these Side Mirror episodes which introduce concepts and tools that feature in our signature Towards Fulfilling Performance development programme. If you're listening for the first time, Hello, I'm Andy Follows. I'm a trusted adviser to senior leaders in the automotive industry. I work alongside them and their teams to enable Fulfilling Performance. Contact me if you'd like to know more. In November 2010, prompted by a suggestion in an email newsletter that I had subscribed to I sat down and fleshed out the details behind the statement"what my life will be like". I'm recording this episode knowing that it will be published on the first of January 2024. As it's a time of year when we often set aside some time for reflection and goal setting, I thought it'd be an ideal episode to share my experience of this exercise. Often when we talk about goal setting we're encouraged to set SMART goals that is goals or objectives that are specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, and time bound or some slight variation of the SMART acronym. We're recommended to break them down into action steps and work out how we're going to measure our progress. Whilst this approach is well proven and effective, that can feel like a fair amount of work and be off putting sometimes so much say that we decided not to bother at all. Unlike that approach, I'd say this exercise was fun. I'd even use the word playful. And I use that word very deliberately because play is a behaviour we often consigned to our childhood. The exercise I'm going to share with you allows or even requires us to use our imagination. Some of us find that easier than others. The exercise encourages us to create in our imaginations how we would like our life to be. When I did this just over 13 years ago, I chose to focus on imagining my next career. I'll share what I wrote with you shortly. As you'll hear, it was not a structured act of goal setting, but a stream of consciousness piece where I let my imagination run a little more freely. I thought for a while about whether to share this with you. After all, it is very personal. And because it's so uniquely relevant to my own aspirations, it may well seem boring and irrelevant to you. In the end, I've decided that it still might be helpful to share it as an example, especially as it comes across as quite simple and almost naive. I want to reveal how easy and accessible this exercise is so that if the idea does appeal to you, you're not put off from doing it. I also want to encourage you as I've done here to let go of what Mike Dooley calls "the cursed hows". This is not the time to concern yourself with how to make these things happen. This is the time to let your imagination go. Explore what scenarios excite you and show your current self the life you want to have. Arguably, I could have been even more unlimited in what I wrote. At the time I was responsible for BMW Financial Services and Alphera Financial Services in New Zealand. I was very deeply invested in a corporate job and career. The lifestyle I envisaged and wrote out for myself already felt like a stretch of the imagination. You'll hear that I start out quite cautiously, before getting more adventurous with describing my vision for my future self. Let me take a moment to tell you about our sponsor. This episode is brought to you by ASKE Consulting who are experts in Executive Search, Resourcing Solutions and Talent Management across all sectors of the automotive industry in the UK and Europe. I’ve known them for almost 20 years, and I can think of no more fitting sponsor for CAREER-VIEW MIRROR. They're the business we go to at Aquilae when we're looking for talent for our clients and for projects that we're working on. ASKE was founded by Andrew McMillan whose own automotive career includes board level positions with car brands and leasing companies. All ASKE consultants have extensive client-side experience which means they bring valuable insight and perspective for both their employer and candidate customers. My earliest experience of working with Andrew was in 2004 when he helped me hire Regional Managers for my leasing sales team at Alphabet. More recently, when Aquilae was helping a US client to establish a car subscription business, ASKE Consulting was alongside us helping us to develop our people strategy and identify and bring on board suitable talent. Clients we've referred to ASKE have had an equally positive experience. Andrew and the team at ASKE are genuinely interested in the long-term outcomes for you and the people they place with you. They even offer the reassurance of a 2-year performance guarantee which means they have‘skin in the game’ when working with you. If you're keen to secure the most talented and high potential people to accelerate your business and gain competitive advantage, do get in touch with them and let them know I sent you. You can email Andrew and the team at hello@askeconsulting.co.uk or check out their website for more details and more client feedback at www.askeconsulting.co.uk . ASKE is spelt A S K E You’ll find these contact details in the shownotes for this episode. Ok, let’s get back to our episode. This is, word for word, what I wrote I'll wear smart casual clothes but no tie. Some days, I'll get up in the morning and work from home, after taking the kids to school and reading the paper with a coffee. I won't be limited to a certain number of days holiday per year, but will be able to nip off for a week to see family and friends if it's convenient for me. My "job" in inverted commas will involve thinking, researching collating information and coming up with creative ways to share that information with others. For example, devising presentations or writing articles, my work will be achievement focused, not time focused. Once it's done, it's finished. And I'll go and play not have to hang around while others work. I'll be able to go to the gym when it's quiet. That is to the rock star 9.15 or 4.30 sessions. What I'm doing will improve the lives of other people. I love my job so much that I won't ever consider retiring. It won't even feel like a job it will just wind down to accommodate other interests or old age. I think I've just described a sort of semi retirement. Oh, well, I believe the starting point is to get these things out there. I'll save this email. And in five years, I bet I'll be able to tick 80% of the boxes. How about that for a goal! That's what I wrote on the second of November 2010. Reviewing now, what I wrote back then, I noticed that whilst it is simple, it reveals a few factors that I suspect made it an effective document for me and that have contributed to me being able to make it happen. It shows self awareness about my values, my strengths, and the type of activities I like to be engaged in. The better we know ourselves, the more accurately we're able to use our imagination to project our future self into scenarios, in which, when we eventually realise them, we will thrive. There's implied recognition of the need to start a business. To turn this vision into reality most likely requires self employment. The desire to create a business one day had been with me for a long time. There's no mention of money, the riches that I was envisioning were meaningful relationships with my wife and children, the autonomy to choose what I do and who I spent time with, and having the time to include fitness and personal development. It presents a long term view that takes into account how I believe I want my career to continue. It reveals my belief in the power of visioning and this type of exercise. Whilst at the time I can assure you as a corporate employee, I felt this description was a bit of a stretch. I clearly had faith that in five years time 80% of it would have happened. Why am I able to believe that is it because I think the universe is going to do my bidding, as long as I make my desires sufficiently clear. No, it's far less New Age woowoo than that. I believe in the power of the subconscious mind. If we make it clear enough to ourselves what we want, our subconscious will support us to take the decisions along the way, most likely to lead to what we've articulated that we want. I'll go so far as to say that this exercise will work whether or not you believe in it, how much you enjoy the outcome will depend on how self aware you are when you create your vision of how your life will be. You've been listening to CAREER-VIEW MIRROR with me Andy Follows my end in mind for sharing the story is to encourage you to have some fun, unleash your imagination, reflect on your values strengths and interests and in some way, shape or form capture that stream of consciousness about how your life will be in a document. That exercise will give you increased clarity and a sense of intentionality that will inform your decision making and actions. And I hope that you'll return to this document after an appropriate period of time to find that much of what you've wished for you've been able to create for yourself. If you enjoy listening to our episodes, please could you do me a huge favour and share them with someone you lead parent or mentor or a friend do you think will also appreciate them? Thank you to our sponsors for this episode ASKE Consulting and Aquilae and thank you to the CAREER-VIEW MIRROR team, without whom we wouldn't be able to share our guests life and career stories. And above all, thank you to you for listening.
Osman Abdelmoneim:
No matter how hard you try. No matter how hard working you are. You're never going to be able to do it on your own. It's just not possible.
Paul Harris:
You know, at the end of the day you're steering your own destiny. So if it's not happening for you and you're not seeing what you want out there, then go out there and connect.
Sherene Redelinghuys:
Don't rely on others. You have to do it yourself. You have to take control.
Rupert Pontin:
If you've got an idea if you've got a thought about something that might be successful, if you've got a passion to do something yourself, you just haven't quite got do it.
Tom Stepanchak:
Take a risk. Take a chance stick your neck out. What's the worst that can happen? You fall down okay, you pick yourself up and you try again.