Warning: A Big Leap is a radical shift in thinking, which challenges one or more of the assumptions you have previously made about life. Once you’ve made a big leap, life will never be the same again.
Make Your First Baby Step to Creating The Life You Really Want in the next 3 Minutes!
Ok, so you hate your job. You turn up every day and go through the motions. Your colleagues irritate you or maybe your boss gets on your nerves. Or maybe you feel bored, unfulfilled or are you doing the job of five people and you’re so stressed you can’t see straight? You live for the weekends and you literally feel sick with dread on Sunday night. You want to change your job but you simply don’t know how. Maybe you’ve already looked in the job pages, maybe you’ve already applied for something else. But you’re not sure if you’re on the right track. You don’t want to end up making another mistake and find yourself in the same position five years down the line.
Ok, let’s see if we can help. The following process will take 3 minutes. Get a piece of paper and scribble down the answers to the following:
Step 1: Ask a big question:
Forget reality for a second. Let’s whisk you off to La La land: If we waved a magical Big Leap wand and you woke up in a year’s time with your dream job, what would you be doing?
You don’t have to get realistic – allow yourself to daydream and go a little over the top. Most of us get our dreams kicked out of us in childhood. ‘You want to be an astronaut? Don’t be ridiculous. Have you thought of accounting?’ our teachers/parents and career advisors said. So we passed our exams, launched ourselves on careers that they said would make us happy and then bought the house and car to go with the career. We did all the ‘right’ things, lived by the ‘right’ rules. So how come we’re so resentful and exhausted?
Step away from the old way of thinking for a second and allow yourself to say out loud what it is you really would love to do – from children’s book illustrator to a professional golfer – just say it. Out loud, if you can.
Step 2: Ready to leap?
Ok, brace yourself. We’re back to reality. Making the big leap is fundamentally about changing the way we think as well as changing what we do. So answer the next big question:
What would you have to believe about yourself to change career direction at this point and start to create the career that you really want?
Stay with the question. Don’t get into ‘that’s not possible’ or ‘who will pay the mortgage? Just the answer the question. What would you have to believe? That you were clever enough? Brave enough? Talented enough? Savvy enough? Good enough? That you’re gorgeous, a quietly confident maverick, someone who has the brains, determination and flair to make a new business work?
Step 3:Take a bootcamp baby step:
Our beliefs form and come true for us when we find evidence to back them up. What we focus on expands. If you believe that it will never be possible for you to change career, that life’s a bitch and then you die, well you’re right. What you believe about the world is true. Your reality is what you think it is. So if you want to change your reality, change your beliefs. Change your belief by finding some new evidence to support the new belief you wrote down in step 2. If you have to believe you’re clever enough to create your new life – what action can you take in the next 3 minutes to prove to yourself that this is true – from doing the crossword to doing an IQ test on the internet? It generally takes around 100 pieces of evidence before a new belief takes root and your focus begins to change effortlessly. Take a baby step and go and find your first piece of evidence NOW. Change your belief, change your reality, change your thinking, change your job, change your life.
Congratulations, you’ve just made a big leap in 3 minutes.
“I wish someone had said to me years ago that I could enjoy work and not slowly sink into a mire of stress and boredom. You don’t have to live that way. I am in the process of making my Big Leap – and finding a new career in the media and arts. No matter how challenging the journey can be at time, it could never be as hideous as seeing my soul seep away day after day in a job I hated. My message to you is – take the Leap!"
Christopher Gibbs, 34, Big Leaping from accountancy to becoming a student in media and psychology.
Slackers Corner!
To change your life in 3 seconds ask yourself this question
If you didn’t have to prove anything to anyone, what would you do with the rest of your life?
