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Life and Career Designing

Welcome to the process of Creating Your Future: Designing Your Life and Career 



Preparing for the Journey

You are embarking on a lifetime journey. Here are some of the ways that you and I work together to prepare you for the next stage of your journey. As you create this lifetime journey, you continue to ask seven questions: What, Why, Who, When, Where, How, and Which. As you answer the questions, you create your Serious Dream.

Fountain and Funnel

As you answer each question, you burst forth—like a fountain—with a whole range of possible answers. Then you focus—like a funnel—on the answers that are most important to you. You probably prefer either fountain work or funnel work. To create your Serious Dream, you must do both. You must consider lots of possibilities and you must make lots of clear choices.

Image with Words

As you generate your fountain of possibilities, use a Learnings Journal to keep everything together. As you set priorities, funnel your choices onto one large sheet of paper. On that paper, create an image with nine sections, one each for: 

Place, Purpose, Potentials, People, Pay, Process, Partners, Politics, and Possibilities.

Create an image that appeals to you, such as a tree or a ship or a house or an island. The image I have used is a Castle—with the priorities in nine towers—but you can put your answers into whatever image you choose. Why a castle? Castles are an appropriate image for designing our lives because they represent two different things simultaneously. Castles are airy, fantastic, dreamlike visions. Castles are also solid, historic, real buildings. To design your life you need a dreamlike vision that you turn into rock-solid reality. You have to dream and you have to take the dream seriously.

Group and Solo

Some of the time you work with a group—especially when you are gathering ideas or want to get reactions to your decisions. At other times, you work alone to develop your own ideas and make your own decisions.

Action and Reflection

You may be tempted to race through the questions. Remember to pause regularly for reflection. Go for a walk or look out the window. Think about your answers for a while. Then think about nothing for a while.

Does this process really work?

Yes. You can get almost anything you want as long as you are willing to give up almost anything else. Michelangelo and Donatello envisioned their sculptures within the marble and then removed the superfluous marble. Look into the marble of your life for the vision of your future. Keep that vision very clear in your mind as you gradually take away everything that does not belong to your vision. Focus on your Serious Dream.