As I’ve mentioned in the past, I send a career success quote to my subscribers every day. Last Friday, the quote was from Charles A. Garfield, author of the Peak Performance Trilogy. Check it out…
“Peak performers develop powerful mental images of the behavior that will lead to the desired results. They see in their mind’s eye the result they want, and the actions leading to it.”
This quote reminds me of the career advice in Tweet 11 in my career success book Success Tweets. “Create a vivid mental image of yourself as a success. This vivid mental image will keep you motivated and moving forward when things get tough.”
You have to define what career success means to you personally and develop a clear mental picture of your career success. This image should be as vivid as you can you make it. Try to create your career success vivid image in 3-D.
When I was 25, I created a vivid image of myself as a success coach, motivational speaker, management consultant and author. I worked in my home office – where I wrote and developed the programs I delivered at client locations. This office had a floor-to-ceiling wall of books that I could use for easy reference. It also had a state of the art IBM Selectric typewriter and a big, clunky telephone. PCs and the Internet were science fiction in 1975.
I also saw myself having one to one discussions with senior leaders in a variety of organizations, conducting training and team-building sessions in conference rooms at their locations. Amazingly, many of the people in the sessions were smoking. I had very vivid images of standing in front of large audiences at sales meetings doing talks. I saw myself signing a book I had written at a bookstore. I also saw myself on airplanes, traveling to my speaking, coaching and consulting gigs.
All of these vivid images came true. My office is much as I had imagined it – except it has two PCs and a cell phone, not a Selectric typewriter and a clunky rotary phone. The wall of books is there – overflowing. I’ve written 15 of the books on the shelf. People don’t smoke in my training and team-building sessions anymore and I use PowerPoint instead of handwritten flip charts, but the big stuff is the same as I’ve imagined it. I’ve spoken to audiences all over North America, in Latin America, Europe and Asia. I am a million-mile flyer with United Air Lines.
I’m living my career success dream – in large part because I dared to dream it all those years ago.
What’s your career success dream? Have you created a vivid mental image of it?
I suggest that you take some time for yourself. Ask and answer these three questions:
- Where do I want to be 10, 20 and 30 years from now?
- What will it look like and feel like when I’m there?
- What will my life be like?
When you ask and answer these questions, you will be on your way to developing a clear vivid mental image of your career success. This is not day-dreaming. It is real work. You are designing your future in your mind.
Keep this mental picture of your career success with you as you go about your day-to-day business. Every once in a while, ask yourself if what you did that day brought you any closer to your mental image of career success. If the answer is no, make sure that you take at least one act the very next day to move closer to your vivid mental image of your career success. In this way, you’ll be keeping your dream alive – and moving toward your goal.
The common sense career coach success point here is simple. As Charles Garfield suggests, successful people define what success means to them. Then they develop a compelling and clear mental image of their success. They heed the advice in Tweet 11 in Success Tweets: “Create a vivid mental image of yourself as a success. This vivid mental image will keep you motivated and moving forward when things get tough.” Visualization is powerful. The more vivid the image you have of your success, the more likely you are to succeed. Use your vivid mental image to help keep your career success dreams alive and to keep moving forward to what you want in your life and career. Creating a vivid mental image of your career success is not day-dreaming. It’s real work – it’s the work of designing your future.
That’s the career advice I found in Charles Garfield’s quote on powerful mental images. What do you think? Please take the time to share your thoughts with us in a comment. And as always, thanks for reading my daily musings on life and career success. I really appreciate you for taking the time to read what I write.
Bud
PS: If you haven’t already done so, please download a free copy of my popular career advice book Success Tweets and its companion piece Success Tweets Explained. The first gives you 140 bits of career success advice tweet style — in 140 characters or less. The second is a whopping 390 + pages of career advice explaining each of the common sense tweets in Success Tweets in detail. Go to http://budurl.com/STExp to claim your free copy. You’ll also start receiving my daily life and career success quotes.
PPS: I opened a membership site last September. It’s called My Corporate Climb and is devoted to helping people create career success inside large corporations. You can find out about the membership site by going to http://www.mycorporateclimb.
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