Igniting our imagination yields tangible strategic results and can be done in highly practical ways. Here are a few more suggestions, continuing our series from last week.
Today’s installment is inspired in part by Herminia Ibarra’s Working Identity, a title we covered in my no-reading-required book club recently. If you missed it, it’s not too late to be sent the recording.
“Make yourself malleable” is the key idea.
What could that look like?
It means putting yourself in situations where your ingrained ways of doing and being are less rigid than usual. “Soften your edges” so that you are more open to letting new possibilities come into focus.
More specifically, you can try…
- …running some experiments. Ibarra asserts that we navigate transitions more easily through action than planning — so try a few things! Lower the stakes by placing small, short term bets and seeing how well the new experiences suit the emerging you. (Sign up for a class. Learn a new skill. Host a one-off gathering. Offer to take on a short-term assignment…)
- …surrounding yourself with different people than usual. We become like who we hang out with, so if you are exploring a change, a new community of people can jumpstart it. (This doesn’t have to be a high stakes move. Join a new community group or online gathering — no need to become lifelong friends quite yet!)
- …putting yourself in a new environment temporarily — ideally one where people don’t know the former you. Solo travel or attending a retreat are effective examples of this. You can try on multiple new identities in those settings. I picture it being like trying on a costume. You don’t have to wear it forever, but you can see how it feels.
- …enlisting the help of a “guiding figure.” This could be an elder, a coach, a therapist, a spiritual director or a wise friend (as long as they aren’t invested in you staying the same!). Intentionally asking someone to keep us company on this journey puts us in a position of greater openness to sifting through the possibilities that are starting to emerge.
One other tip that might be unexpected:
- Grieve what you need to let go of. If you are actively resisting a change (which is often a completely understandable reaction), you are unlikely to be open to reimagining your next chapter. Acceptance is an easier posture from which to imagine your next move, and often that’s hard-won.
Even with these nudges, you may still be unsure about the realms in which to launch these experiments. More next time on how to begin filling in those details in your imagined picture.