The world is divided, in my view, between those people who feel they have surrendered their lives to destiny and those people who feel they can influence the important things in their lives. For the latter, "internal locus of control" is the term psychologists use to describe those who have the psychographics, what German sociologist Max Weber called the Weltanschuung , the world view, to influence the important issues in one's own life.

For some, if they get sick with an illness or disease, "It's God's will, and, if I get better, it was meant to be." However, Norman Cousins, years ago in his classic book Anatomy of an Illness , recognized the influence of the individual will to shape her or his survival.

For others, if they are to become wealthy, it will occur because lightning strikes, and they win the lottery. The notion escapes them that each of us can create a financially successful future for self and family through our own enterprise.

Areas of relationships are a bit more "fuzzy," as a legion of writers from Naomi Wolf to Dr. Laura Schlesinger to Daniel Goleman suggest, and shaping our bodies and ourselves can be an unending source of frustration, as one of my favorite comic strip artists, Cathy Guisewaite, reminds us in "Cathy."

 

Visualizing: Creating a Plan from a Dream

Our friend Stephen Covey had it right, in The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People , with the first habit, "to begin with the end in mind."

I'm not talking about some vague hope or dream of largesse and wellness. I'm talking about creating your own personal visualization - as a work plan with goals and strategies - that seems as rich in detail as a digital photo transmitted to your computer, one that you can enlarge and examine in each of the important areas.

Blow up those areas of dreams for your inspection. Try them on! What do they look like? How do they feel? Smell? Taste?

"The greatest tragedy in life is people who have sight but no vision," remarked Helen Keller, the blind woman who became one of our greatest inspirations.

Our lessons sometimes come from funny places in our lives. The power of visualization was not something that I learned in the hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars of training that DuPont invested in me. Rather, I learned it on the suburban softball field, with teen-aged girls, coaching my daughter Rachel's team over the years.

As each girl went to bat in a critical moment, I challenged her to visualize the ball being batted back through the infield, using all that we had worked on in practice. And, on defense, I coached the girls to visualize two things, "What do I do if the ball is hit to me, and what do I do if it's hit to someone else?"

In a recreational league where a lottery and draft effectively stocked each team equitably at the beginning of the season, spring after spring our team competed for the championship, essentially because these teen-aged girls learned to visualize during the game, and throughout the season, and execute our plan!

Reflection and Questioning is a Planning Cornerstone

How do we build that vision? In the problem-solving strategic planning we do for our clients, for themselves and their businesses, we make it a point - no, an act of principle - to point out that research and reflection precede planning and design. That means asking questions, lots of them.

 

The above is an excerpt from The Last Job Search Guide You'll Ever Need: How to Find and Get the Job or Internship of Your Dreams, which is available for sale for $19.85 in our bookstore or $27.00 at Amazon.com but for free to those who subscriber to our free career newsletter. This hot new book contains job search secrets of the most experienced, most knowledgeable and most respected career experts. Learn career planning, job hunting tools and tactics, interviewing, cover letter and resume writing (lots of samples!), networking, and how to find an internship. Written by 149 career experts. To receive a free copy, subscribe to our free career newsletter.

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