By Craig Nathanson

Do you ever wish you had a few more options when trying to figure out how to move towards more of what you want in your work related life? Here are some ideas that might help expand your thinking.

1. Change your physical space. Motion changes emotion and helps you think about things from a new perspective.
   
   
2. Think about it from someone else's perspective. It takes practice but you'll get different answers that may be helpful.
   
   
3. Draw a picture of what you want in your vocational life. Imagine what your new life sounds like, feels like, smells like, tastes like. We all make meaning through our five senses.
   
   
4. Find someone else you think is living the vocational life you want and ask them what they would do and then copy! This is modeling, if it works for them, why not you?
   
   
5. Define for yourself what your perfect vocational day would be like? You may just need to first define this day for yourself before asking others.
   
   
6. Practice thinking about your work related life in a new way. Think about how you are going to think about it; break your regular pattern.
   
   
7. Laugh! Humor helps break those negative patterns of thinking.
   
   
8. Ask yourself, how would an eight-year-old deal with this? It's amazing what questions kids can ask to break it all down.
   
   
9. Post a picture and description of your perfect vocational day on your wall for a few days. Your brain will get tired of not knowing how to move towards this and will come up with new ideas.
   
   
10. Figure out what you have at risk by not moving towards more of what you want. Its hard to change your vocational life when nothing is at stake.
    
    
11. Define a moving towards strategy. Positive and Proactive strategies will always defeat negative and reactive ones.
    
    
12. Disassociate and watch yourself actually living your perfect vocational day? You will be amazed what you can imagine.
    
    
13. Move ahead in time, five years and write a letter to yourself advising what you should do. Part of the problem with planning in the present is you take in the baggage of the past.
    
    
14. Observe how someone you admire would deal with this. If it's good enough for them, why not for you?
    
    
15. Ask yourself how you can take the first steps to move towards more of what you want and then exercise for 30 minutes and come back and let the first answer come to mind. When those endorphins release, it's the best mind advancing drug there is.
    
    
16. Open up the dictionary and read the first word you see. Read the definition. Ask yourself, how could this apply to moving towards your perfect vocational day? Divergent thinking can help you notice solutions from a different angle.
    
    
17. What could be the riskiest thing to do to move towards more of what you want? Now, do the next thing that comes to mind. Sometimes all it takes is using that risk taking muscle a few times.
    
    
18. Say to yourself, I believe it is possible to live my perfect vocational day. I hope isn't enough. Go ahead try it, no one's listening. Notice the difference?
    
    
19. Reward yourself if you actually take action. We all have the ability to pat ourselves on the back first.
    
    
20. Take a deep breath. We all need air to think.