Week 2: Starting With The End In Mind
Three different ways to create your career vision and a special coaching offer for subscribers!
Welcome to week 2 of the Career Clarity Challenge!
This challenge will be great for you if:
You’ve not thought about your long-term career plan, say the next 5-10 years.
You’re unsure about your next steps.
You want a more motivating vision of the future.
As South Asian women, generally, we can be told either directly or indirectly that our careers are secondary to what our families/society expect or want from us.
You may be pressured to get married and make limitations to advance in your role. I’ve heard women say, ‘Why plan ahead? If I meet someone, I’ll be expected to give up my job and move to a different location.’
Negative perceptions exist regarding our capabilities once we have children or caring responsibilities for elders. Our culture praises women who sacrifice and care, but we need to ensure our needs are also met, and our ambitions are not neglected.
Many women don’t seek promotions because they are unable to take on additional responsibilities. That’s not necessarily a bad thing. We need to realise where we are and what we want for the future because someday, those pressures will ease.
Our careers are another aspect of our lives that can provide fulfilment and security. So, we should consider our ambitions for the future and find a role or career that can provide not only what we want but also what motivates us, interests us, and makes us feel good.
Why Think Long-Term
Whilst long-term can seem far away and unpredictable, the benefits of creating your long-term plan (which I deem to be 5-10 years) include:
You will be empowered to make decisions that are aligned with your goals because you have done the groundwork.
You can start networking and telling people what you are looking for, whether internally or externally.
Start working on skills that you will need in the future. A clear direction will help you know what to work on.
If you're ready to work with me one-on-one on your career goals, see the end of this post for a special coaching offer.
I’ve also added a great tool for paid subscribers to help you assess your values and ensure they align with your plan.
Challenge 2: Starting With The End In Mind
At this stage, I would love you to think BIG! This is about dreaming of the best possible future. Even if it seems impossible right now, I want you to use your imagination, lean deep into your passions, and ask yourself what you desire.
This week, you are challenged to create your Career Vision for the ideal role you want to hold in 5-10 years.
For this exercise, in particular, I’m giving you several options for creating your career vision, depending on how you prefer to learn. I usually do this with my 1-2-1 clients. Once I know their preferred learning style, we adapt actions to support them in completing the exercises; you can choose one or more ways to do this.
These are the main three styles:
Visional learner, reading/seeing what you need to learn.
Auditory learned - do you prefer audiobooks?
Kinesthetic learner- touching, or in this case, perhaps drawing/writing out.
Using Visualisations
When you feel calm and comfortable, close your eyes and relax your body. I want you to imagine waking up in the morning. Then, imagine in detail what your ideal day would look like at work from the moment you wake up. You can write this down using the question prompts below or use the audio below to visualise it in your mind.
As you imagine going through your day, ask yourself these questions:
How do you feel when you wake up knowing that you’re going to your ideal job?
Where are you working, is it a different city or country?
Which organisation are you working for?
What are you doing with your time in the day? What do you really enjoy?
What role do you have (job title)?
Who are you working with? E.g. team members, senior leaders, clients, etc.
Be as detailed as possible to create a clear picture of your ideal role. I want you to imagine yourself in that future and imagine what it could be like. I want you to think about what emotions you feel as you go about your day and what you see and hear.
Auditory - here is my audio of the above:
Kinesthetic
The third way to visualise your future is to draw it out, sometimes known as art therapy.
You don’t need to be an artist, but drawing allows you to access the creative side of your brain. It may also help you think of opportunities or dreams you haven’t considered.
So, get a blank piece of paper and give yourself 5 to 60 minutes to draw your ideal role. Draw it out in any way you want to, whether it’s using pencils, colours, stick people, or stickers/pictures.
Then, consider your drawing and what it means to you. What does it represent to you? What emotions would you say it highlights?
Once you have a career vision of the future, coaching can help you break that down into smaller, manageable actions that will help you achieve it. It will also increase your motivation to achieve the goals you have imagined for yourself.
When you face some of those internal barriers and consider whether to apply for new roles or enroll in a new course, your vision can help you remember that you are doing it for a future job.
✨Special Coaching offer ✨
If you are interested in working on your career goals now, I’m introducing a special coaching offer only to How Round Is Your Roti subscribers. (That’s everyone getting this email in their inbox!).
While the challenge is ongoing, I’m offering one to three coaching Career Clarity sessions to help you get on the right path.
This is a limited-time offer (expiring 18th March 2025) because I want the momentum from the challenge to stay with you and continue into our sessions.
We can work together on your career goals and challenges for only £95 per session (usually £150) to set you up for success.
See here for further details of these Career Clarity Sessions and how to book your session(s).
Paid Subscribers
To align yourself with your career plan and make the right decisions, you should be aware of and act according to your values.
I’d like to share this workbook as a starting point to help you identify your values and understand how they can support you.
If you’d like to upgrade to be a paid subscriber, you can see the full archive of additional resources for just £5 at any time.
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