If you feel stuck in a job or career that doesn’t suit you, if you’re not happy and excited about going to work each day, maybe it’s time to make a change — because it doesn’t have to be that way. 

Two things stand between most of us and our ideal business or job: First, we wouldn’t know it if we fell over it. That’s because we haven’t taken the time to design our ideal job. Second, our lives are strewn with barrier beliefs — beliefs that prevent us from getting what we want. 

In designing your ideal job or business, you must enlist both sides of your brain in creating the desired reality. The left brain enumerates the criteria; the right brain gets a sense of what the job would be like and then sees it as a done deal. Most of us are good at the former, not so good at the latter. We attend to the details and get busy with all we have to do. Pretty soon we’re up to our desktops in “do-do” and not a bit closer to our goal.  

Reaching goals takes a long time and a lot of effort when you stay in the left brain. Don’t ignore the gift of the right brain. Let your right brain energize your goal, creatively find what’s missing and attract it to you. Here’s how: 

1. List what you don’t like about your present situation and use “positive denials” to eliminate attachment to those characteristics.

If you have a cup filled with coffee and want tea instead, you must first pour out the coffee. The same is true of your ideal business or job. You must empty your subconscious of negative contents related to your present job before filling it with the details of your ideal job. 

Identify the characteristics of your present job or business that you don’t like and want to “dump.” Then write positive denials about them. Positive denials express your refusal to buy into commonly accepted rules of the game. For example, if you don’t like punching a time clock (literally or figuratively), write, “I no longer believe that I have to work 8 to 5 in order to have a high paying job with a good future.” Here are more examples:

• I no longer believe that I have to work 40 hours a week (60? 70?) to earn a good living.
• I no longer believe that I have to put up with incompetent people in order to get ahead.
• I never have to accept boring jobs or assignments.
• I never have to sit in commuter traffic in order to meet my work obligations.

2. List what your job would be like if you could wave a magic wand or twitch your nose and have exactly what you want.

Write down the number of hours you want to work, the type of clothing you want to wear, the time of day or night you work most productively, the surroundings you want to see (sleek high-tech, warm and homey), the sounds you want to hear (silence, music, people talking, machines operating, birds chirping, waves crashing), whether you want to work alone or with others and how many others. If you’re in sales, specify whether you like short-term sales that can be finalized quickly or the excitement of contracts that have to be negotiated through multiple stages and take months to finalize. Write everything down — the more details the better. 

3. Illustrate it. 

After you’re really clear about exactly what suits you, illustrate it. Cut photos and graphics from magazines and create a collage that represents the many different aspects of your ideal job or business. Or do a single drawing, it’s up to you. 

4.  Write positive affirmations about the things on your list. 

Affirmations state the results you want to achieve. Since your subconscious takes you literally, word your affirmations as though you have already achieved the results. For example, if you want flexible hours, write, “I love being able to set my own work hours. I get a lot more done this way.”  

5. Banish limiting beliefs.

Most of us structure our lives around beliefs accumulated over the years and rarely questioned. Examine your beliefs about work, career and money and discover the ones that keep you in an ill-suited job or business.   

For example, maybe you believe the adage, “no pain, no gain,” so everything worthwhile automatically becomes a struggle. Or perhaps you believe that it’s wrong to challenge authority figures so you don’t dare go against your boss, even when s/he is wrong. If you own your own business, perhaps you’re trying to run it according to the dictates of the “experts” and feel constrained, like you’ve been fitted with a corset instead of a company. 

You need to stop doing what others tell you to do. Be willing to go against authority figures. Like Sinatra, do it your way. Above all, be willing to produce results easily — to receive as opposed to earn.  There are limits to what you can earn, but no limits to what you can receive.   

6.  Be willing to have your new business or job take an unplanned form. 

Once you’ve specified in great detail the characteristics of your ideal business or job and cleared your subconscious of inhibiting beliefs, you’ll need to develop an action plan targeting this new goal. Go ahead, with one caution: Don’t allow an organized, sequential left

brain focus to blind you to the gifts of your imagination. Be willing to let the new business or job present itself in a totally unexpected way. You may end up doing something completely different from anything you ever thought you’d be doing, yet find that it meets all of your criteria. That could be pretty exciting! 

7. Be willing to change your business or place of employment.

If the type of work environment you desire can’t possibly occur in your present situation, have the courage to leave. Just as you must pour out the coffee before filling your cup with tea, you may have to peel off your present environment before the new one can take shape around you. 

8.  Lastly, look at your pictures daily and read the affirmations and denials.

Be open to surprises and watch how your ideal position serendipitously appears. Only you know the truth - it wasn't by accident.

 

Lynea Corson-Hadley, Ph.D., is an expert in helping others break through blocks to reaching their goals in all areas of professional and personal life. She is president of Life Skills Unlimited, publishers of sales, health and educational materials; an international speaker and trainer; and coauthor of the book, The Secrets of Super Selling, from which this article was adapted. Corson-Hadley was one of only twelve people in the U.S. to qualify for the 1985 President’s Honor Club with Success Motivation Institute, the world’s largest personal development company.