Small Dreams - Big Achievements in Career Transitions
Posted on June 10, 2024 by Cristina Diconescu, One of Thousands of Career Coaches on Noomii.
How to win by going beyond financial stability and building small dreams through directed self-inquiry and pragmatic actions.
The power of small dreams that lead to big achievements – application on career transitions
For those of us caught by the mystic ambitions of savings the world, it becomes a hard reality that, despite al the actions we strive to take and save the world, there are other forces who work just against that. So, faced with the injustice of the reality, one may just fall into the forever questions of why is the world so unfair, or what am I doing here – maybe I should be somewhere else, or simply putting your arms down in front of “I am defeated”. As biased as we may all be, maybe any of that thought helps, any may be right for any of us in a certain context, moment, at a certain time in our life. We must just be aware that staying in that space will not snap us out to it. Juts by basic logic. It was proved by thousands of years of events and situations people faced all over the world, at any level on authority or moment in life, that when in trouble do as as the Romans do: divide and conquer. (They also lived by “offense is the best defense”, which we’ll talk about later). Maybe and just maybe we should all re-learn to dream small. To allow ourselves to be in the small space sometimes. It could feel cozy and manageable and possibilities to conquer may feel so much bigger. For any big entity is just a formation of small ones. And as oriental beliefs say, you can look for a big thing, it may be hard to find as such, but if you look for small things and put them together, we have more chances of building a big entity and understand rather the concept behind it even if it doesn’t stand in front of us as a mountain. Take a country; it is only a country in itself because we defined it to be that, while in reality is a collection of people, trees, land, crops. A sunflower is a country and it is so because it stands as part of a Romania hectare field of sunflower looked after by people who have an interest there; the lack of that sunflower will reduce the possibilities to define that country – one of which can even be a huge producer of sunflower seeds and oil. So is in everyday life – it may seem hectic for a mother to run the routine of preparing your kid for school every morning, but the lack of his lunch box in the bag will reduce the possibilities in which that kid can define and identify his mother. Hence the entity that woman creates in the role of a mother will become a smaller entity. So it is with any objective we define. If you want to call yourself a writer, writing every day may be the exact small action you must take, the small but consistent and persistent step one must pay to get the big prize. So, the most important characteristics of small actions to result in big achievements must be persistency and consistency – or, as the Romans said – the “offense”. Each day is a dream and each comes after a dream. So, in itself, each action must be looked at as a beautiful possibility of a new dream – as small as it may seem or even be – followed by a purposely chosen action to serve that dream – as small as it may seem or even be. In an era that values “big” more than anything else (either is a house, a car, a bank account or the voice), taking the stance of “small” may be intimidating, may seem dominating oneself and possibly may even give thoughts of annihilations – all of which could then just boomerang you back into looking for the “big”. The awareness itself of staying within the search of small dreams is the single most important act of courage that can be the stepping stone towards one’s unique collection of pebbles and pieces of dust – the craft materials you needed to through out on your canvas, layer after layer, to create your unique painting, which is your objective. An 11 year old who had been studying piano for the last 5 years, started studying trombone 1 year ago and just recently added percussion on tops of the two, told me, when hearing a fragment of majestic electrical guitar skilled performance, part of a worldwide known song – “that doesn’t seem very hard to perform; most people would say that is hard but I think it’s easy to get that done; you just need to try several times.” While kids can speak the truth much better and see through the fog of thinking more accurately than the adults, that line of thought that comes after taking an instrument class each week, every week, for several years, with summer vacation he never touched the instrument, is the perception and perspective that kid is creating about achieving the big. But he doesn’t evaluate it as big but as a new trial. The force of knowledge acquisition through small steps it’s exponential in replicability when skill is built and pattern of thought – emotion – perception is defined trough small dreams. Just as the kid translated his thought pattern, so we can approach now the small dreams – big achievements concept to career transition study. I have spent many years experiencing, researching and reflecting on what makes a transition from stability of a well paid job in a company to an entrepreneurial set up/ freelance/ career change in any form it may take – so difficult, especially for ambitious, high achievers personalities. First, defining “stability” is essential – at the surface it may make you think at the financial aspect – which most of professionals pondering this transition will bring up. However, only the existence of the thought of change (as I call it “the seed”) means that the brain sees that change as a very real possibility of continuing life – and, by the best existing knowledge about the brain – the brain only accepts (and creates) thoughts that protect your existence. So there must be something else coming in the way of taking action and making the change. The realization I had recently, after many hours of conversations and investigations, is that people tend to define deep down stability by the frequency of achievements that take place every day, the “wins” one has, or the stories the brain creates (in many cases false reality) to protect the person’s existence in that environment which eventually gives the perceived stability – pays the monthly check and indeed ensures a financial gain. So, the feeling that triggers the pragmatic thought of financial stability is in fact the winning feeling – so basic, primary and ancestral, the primordial “winning” feeling dictated by our reptilian brain, the precise one that has not changed throughout the thousands of years that humans have existed. Corporate environment has been conceptualized for this specific reason – to give you access to winning, to train you to win, to create teams that win, to give you constructive feedback so you can win, to share you winning in front of others and be acclaimed, to be recognized for winning. Armies of people are working every day for nurturing these pillars of a company’s existence, managers get constant training, new joiners are inducted on that – all for the benefit of winning (and at a huge financial cost for the company). When not winning, that environment will still give your brain the space to thread stories that will protect you staying in there, eventually defining the belonging and the identity as an overlap with that winning culture. In quite a dramatic antithesis – a jump in a story of entrepreneurship or a even in another company/ culture/ type of job – will be met by a period of learning which is not defined by winning but by the characterizing uncertainty of the knowledge acquisition process. It will not necessarily be about the pragmatic thought of financial matters. Even in case of ensuring the financial matters, the perspective towards winning in the initial phase of the process (and not at the end of the change process) will be definitely in the success (I mean the big winning :) ) of the transition. While we can not press the button and deactivate our winning drive from our reptilian brain, what we can do, knowing the trigger of the thought through which we identify achievements and stability is the feeling of winning, is to control our perspective towards winning – the way we define it ourselves, how can can create moments of winning (in our own definition) that can keep us on track of “offense”. So it becomes that while we look at the money as the reward that feed our financial stability, the consistency of feeling that we are winning is essential in the process.What must I do to feel I am winning today?
How does that take me closer to my goal?
What will that daily act become in 1 year from now?
