Lightbulb Moments

My most recent lightbulb moment happened this morning, so I thought I’d tell you about it.

I talk to lots of people about their careers but I make a point of keeping a close eye on my own career too.

I’ve always thought it would be crazy to spend all of my time asking other people what they want, and never to think about this for myself.

[How would I ever know what other people were thinking or feeling if I shied away from the big career questions, or pretended they didn’t affect me just because I work in careers?]

Last week I spoke to a group of people about their ideal future, and got each one to write their answer down.

It’s quite rare to come up with your ‘forever’ answer first time around, but the beauty of writing down your ‘right now’ answer to a question like this, is you get to come back to it later. Even if you come up with a different answer each time, when you’ve made notes you can decide what each new answer makes you think and how it makes you feel. What I’m getting at is, whatever you write, it’s fantastic material for exploring your career.

Anyway, back to my lightbulb story.

This morning I was thinking about my ideal career future again, and these are the two elements of work I wrote down:

  1. Writing
  2. Supporting Careers

And that’s when the lightbulb moment hit me.

My ideal future is pretty much what I’m doing today.

Lightbulb moments come at the strangest of times.

In the past they’ve happened to me on the train to work, when I’m out walking the dogs, watching TV, doing the washing up and even sitting on the… well, you get the idea.

I should clarify that by lightbulb moments I’m not talking about million dollar inventions or crackpot ideas. I mean those little moments of clarity that always follow when you’ve given yourself some time & space to think (and a sprinkle of encouragement to explore one step further and one step more).

You don’t need to be a creative genius or an evil genius to have lightbulb moments of your own.

We all have them. All of us. Every single one.

Your mind is a wonderful thing, and it has the capacity to continually surprise you.

When it comes to what you want, there’s so much you already know.

Of course it helps if you give yourself a little room. When you carve out a little thinking time just for you. When you give yourself a little nudge to get the ball rolling, or even just lose yourself doing something you enjoy (or maybe even something you’ve always seen as a chore).

After this morning, my message to you is: Give your ideal career future a little more thought.

Write down your answer whatever it might be today.

Come back to it again in the future, and keep an eye out for lightbulbs of course.

As I’ve already said to my wonderful Career Explorer subscribers, if you’re feeling chatty or brave, why not tell us all about your latest lightbulb moment, or share the career question you want to explore more than any other right now. That’s what we’re here for after all!

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(Our thanks to Universal Pictures & Illumination Entertainment
for kindly allowing us to use their clip.)

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