Chasing your dreams and going after what you want in life is reportedly the secret to happiness if you are to believe many source and particularly the plethora of feel-good Hollywood films. If you have a dream and you’ve always wanted to do something, then you shouldn’t let anything stop you – not money, not age and certainly not lack of self-belief.
This is all very good and well though, but what do you do if you haven’t always had a dream? Or what do you do if you once had a dream to become an astronaut but it no longer appeals to you in the way it once did? How can you go after making your life, what you want it to be when you don’t know what it is that you want from life? If you don’t know what’s important to you, then how do you go about improving your life?
The first step in these scenarios then is of course to go about finding out what it is that you want to achieve from life and what you want to become. And to accomplish this there are several strategies you can use. Here we will look at some of them…
Counter-factual Simulation:
This is a rather fancy term for basically using your imagination to pretend that your life has turned out in a certain way. Not sure whether a job is for you? Then take some time out of your schedule to just ‘simulate’ in your mind what having that job would really entail. What time would you be getting home from work? What would you be doing while you were there? What would the salary be like? Play the idea through in your mind and you should be able to tell more easily whether it’s for you or not.
Think What’s Stressing You:
One way to find out what you do want from life is to think about the things you don’t want. In other words then think about what’s stressing you out in your life today and what’s upsetting you – money perhaps, or the weather – and then think about how 
you can change this.
Hypnotherapy:
Hypnotherapy is a highly useful therapeutic tool that’s used by many therapists. This basically allows a therapist to bypass your conscious defense to see what’s really on your mind – some of which perhaps not even you are aware of. Seeing a hypnotherapist can be a great way then to learn more about yourself and this can include what your career goals are.
Your Eulogy:
One little exercise that many self help books and professional recommend is to try writing out your own eulogy as it would sound in an ideal world. In other words write down the things you would want someone to say about you after you were gone, and this way you can learn what’s most important to you. If you find yourself describing yourself as a great family man, then you know you need to start spending more time with your family because that’s clearly what’s really important to you.
The above guest post is written by John Simpsons who is a hypnotherapy specialist.
