Where do you see yourself in 5 years?
This was a question that always came up on job interviews. I would ramble on about how I wanted to work for them and climb the corporate ladder, anything they wanted to hear just so I can land the job. But as I left the interview, that question would echo in my ear. On my drive home, I would silently ask myself, “Where will I be in 5 years?”
If I was in good spirits, I would allow my thoughts to drift into a dream life. A life where I didn’t have to live paycheck to paycheck, where I had a home and not an apartment, a life where I woke up feeling safe and loved. The images of my future would flood my mind and I would smile thinking of my future self. I would get lost in the images that would appear in my mind as if it were a movie playing on a giant screen. I would see myself in a loving relationship, doing something I loved and being happy to be alive
And then I would get interrupted, a honk of another car or my cellphone would ring and reality would set in. My present reality would begin to nag me with doubts and fear that it will ever happen for me. Guilt would show up because I wasn’t already living that life. Then my mind would drift over to people I knew, who I felt were living their dream life and then comparison would set in.
How many of you can relate to this feeling? Where we allowed our present circumstances to control our future thinking. Where doubt, fear, shame and guilt overshadow the beautiful picture of your future. We have all done it. We dream, set goals and then talk ourselves out of our own dream life. We tell ourselves:
Not me
No way
Impossible
Never
We jokingly brush off our dreams and proceed to go back to our current reality. Most of the time we don’t believe we are worthy of living our dream life. A lot of the time, it has to do with old stories we tell ourselves. But I just recently heard someone say, we all have the power within us to change our future. Because we all have the power of visualization.
Visualization is a powerful tool where we can use our mind to hold mental images of our dream life.
Think about that question, where do you see yourself in 5 years? And allow yourself to go there. Get out a piece of paper or your journal and answer the questions below:
Where are you going to live?
What are you going to do for a living?
How much money are you going to make?
What dream car will you own?
What kind of love life will you have?
Where will you spend your vacations?
How will you contribute to the world?
Tap into the magic of visualization and know that this powerful exercise can actually change your life. Save your paper or journal and make sure you re-read it in 5 years. You will be surprised how many things you wrote down actually became your reality.
