you are too busy? What could be more important than making the changes that would make your life better?
Maybe you think it’s impossible to think about what you really want because you’ve invested so much time in the job you currently have, or because you have just started out in your career. Maybe you think it’s impossible because you worry about what others will say. Or it’s impossible because you count on that big salary and you think you will lose it if you make a change.
But it’s not impossible. You might even earn more money. You need to give some serious thought to what you want. All it will take is time and the determination to make work better using your own resources—your personality, your character, your actions.
What action can you take that will help you have the kind of life you want at work today? What can you change about the way you work?
Nelson Mandela knew that if he were to lead the people of South Africa, he could not set himself apart from others. That included the way people referred to him. When I saw him being interviewed on TV, he told the interviewer, “Call me Nelson. That’s what I prefer.” I thought, How amazing, how wonderful. The great Nelson Mandela goes by his first name.
On that day, I decided to no longer signal to students that I wanted to be called doctor or professor or mister. When classes started again, I just wrote “Bob Tobin” on the board. No titles. No degrees. I didn’t lose any stature or prestige. I signaled to my students from day one that the class and the professor would be accessible to them. It was simple.
As I was becoming the kind of professor I wanted to be, some colleagues were curious about what I was doing in class, and I extended an open invitation to them to visit. None did. One friend who taught at another university was always looking for ways to put some excitement in his teaching. His course was on trade regulations, and he would go over the intricacies of each of the laws with the students. He’d tell me how he wanted to change how he taught and he’d ask for teaching suggestions.
“Why not have students research the laws and then present them?” I asked him. “Great idea,” he said. But he worried the students might be uncomfortable and would not explain some of the laws clearly. I told him he could encourage the students, make corrections, or offer a summary.
But again he hesitated, and continued to teach in the same way. He came back the following year and told me once again that the students were so quiet and didn’t participate. I gave him a few more ideas, but eventually we stopped meeting. Although he perceived the barrier to be the students, the real barrier was him.
And the same is true for all of us. It’s not about them. It’s really about us. And taking action requires courage and confidence to do things differently. I’ll talk about both concepts in other chapters of this book.
But first, let’s talk about your dreams.
Dreams Have Soul; Objectives Don’t
I don’t understand why people think their dreams are something for later, something for when they retire. Retirement is not a guarantee, especially in these economic times. Why wait until life expectancy is at its shortest to begin to live fully? Do they think they will live forever? A person’s life can be cut short in an instant, and their dreams die with their last breath.
That’s why I always ask new clients about their dreams. It’s your dreams that connect to your soul and your spirit. Paraphrasing the words of Henry David Thoreau, “Go confidently in the direction of your dreams! Live the life you’ve imagined.”1
It’s rare for people to talk about their dreams in these terms, or even talk about their dreams at all. Usually people label their dream as something narrower, like attaining a specific income level, becoming a CEO, or buying a Mercedes-Benz. But those are not the dreams I am talking about. Dreams are bigger. The dreams I mean are those aspirational thoughts about how your life could be when your work aligns with your values. I define a dream as what a person wants for his or her life, including career, lifestyle, place, and values.
Jared Chan, my new client in Hong Kong, was trying to figure out what to do next in his life. He was thirty-six, a graduate of one of the top business schools in America. He had trained as an architect in Australia and was recruited by high-tech firms in Silicon Valley. He stayed with a well-known company there for six years after business school. After he quit, he got in touch with me.
“I just couldn’t do it anymore,” he told me. He didn’t even stick around for his bonus, which would have been $20,000. He told me that having his life back was worth more than that. He didn’t want to stay in the high-tech industry, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to be an architect either.
When we sat down to talk, I asked him specifically about his dreams. I didn’t ask him about his dream job, like so many headhunters had asked before. That’s different. I wanted to know what he wanted for his life, what values were important to him, what aspirations he had. It took him a while to think, but he told me he really wanted to do something much more creative.
Jared wanted to use everything he knew. He didn’t want to work every day either. He’d be very happy if he could help in the preservation of old buildings in Yogyakarta, Singapore, and other places in Asia going through major redevelopment. He didn’t want to see all the old buildings replaced by high-rises. He could help with design and preservation. He knew several languages. He also wanted to get back into hiking and mountain climbing. These were his dreams, and I encouraged him to go toward them.
Over the course of the next several months, he made connections in the region and he flew to Jakarta and Yogyakarta in Indonesia and George Town and Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. He took some design work with a consultancy based in Singapore and began to make his dreams come true. In an email I got from him recently, he told me he had never been happier in his life and his work. He felt he was working with his head and his heart. He said he hadn’t thought it was possible to connect his life and his career, but now he was happily living his dream. His story is the kind I love to hear: stories of people who are making their dreams for their lives come true.
I always make dreams a part of my discussion with new clients. I did the same with students. On the first day of class, I always asked my students about their dreams. Many would say that a dream was something for the future, but I encouraged them—and I want to encourage you—to think of a dream as something for now.
Give some thought now to your own dreams. Write them down. Don’t be shy about declaring your dreams, and don’t be so quick to judge your dreams and say “impossible.” They may be more possible than you think. There is no end to the number of people who will tell you you’re not being realistic. Listen to them at your peril. Ignore a big portion of what these naysayers tell you.
Marc Le Menestrel, a business professor at Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, sees dreaming as a useful tool that can connect our personal lives to our business lives. He has found that people often dream of being part of a community that reflects their values, and of contributing to the lives of other people in some way.
Le Menestrel has found that our dreams can help us in maintaining motivation, taking a long view, and staying flexible. When you keep your dream alive, you are not easily discouraged, you figure out how to deal with obstacles, and you’re able to adapt. Le Menestrel knows how goals can be confining and limiting: “You want to be the master of your goal,” he says, “not the prisoner of your goal.”2
