I loved seeing how shocked Olivia Colman was to hear her name called out as Best Actress at this year’s Oscars. Colman strikes me as a genuinely nice person who would be fun to have a drink with at your local. How wonderful for her to receive what many see as the highest accolade in her profession as something of a rank outside compared to seven-times nominated Glenn Close.

What really strikes a chord with me though is this part of her acceptance speech:

“And any little girl who’s practicing her speech on the telly, you never know. I used to work as a cleaner and I loved that job but I did spend quite a lot of my time imagining this.”

She had a dream… but she also faced reality earning a living while she learned her craft.

I was catching up on an episode of Modern family a couple of nights ago and Jay Pritchet was giving his grand-daughter Alex some career advice. As a high achiever focused on a career in science, she was wavering in trying to make a career from singing after some local open mic nights while at college. Worldly wise Jay counsels her to consider seeing through her science study so that she has something to fall back on should she venture after a singing career at a later date and have it not turn out. It’s not a case of not following your dream but of considering the practicalities and timing given where you are now in life.

So how do these musings relate to YOU? Start by asking yourself “What’s my dream job or accomplishment? Am I doing it? Am I making progress towards it?”

If you are then great. If not…

Thee steps to help you ensure that you get the balance right between facing reality and chasing your dream:

1. The Oscar Vision – if you aren’t feeling that what you currently do to earn a living is setting your world on fire, do you have a sense of what would? Perhaps consider what your Oscar equivalent would be? If there were no barriers and you could do anything that you wanted to do, what would that be and what would your greatest achievement be? Perhaps it is winning an actual Oscar? Yes, you will need to be realistic but start with an inspiring ambition – you can always pull it back a bit later.
2. Your life in flash back – so if you find yourself thinking ‘well that’s all very well but there is no way I am going to be able to ‘win a gold Olympic medal / write a book / be a manager / run my own business / INSERT OWN DREAM HERE’, try to suspend the inner critic voice of judgement for a moment. Instead, spend some time to imagine you are blissfully happy and healthy AND have reached a good age. You’re sitting in your favourite place and looking back over your life…. It is a life where everything unfolded as you would have wanted, including that ‘Oscar’ moment. Now take a look at your life today. What’s the gap between where you are now and what you hope to have happened in the future? How do you close that gap? What’s your first next step? When is a good time for that step? Now? Later? Much later?!
   
3. Choices and consequences – There are times in life when it is a good time to take on something new, take some risks, invest some money etc and times when that is not such a good idea. The important thing is to be aware of your situation, and continue to be so, so that you can make the right choice at the right time. For example, I knew almost 2 years into a 3 year engineering degree that I did not want to be an engineer for the rest of my life but recognised that it was more important to continue and to get a degree and a job than to change track at that point. In fact, I worked as an engineer for over 7 years before deciding the time was right to take my first career change.

   It is important to recognise that every choice you make has a consequence… and to own those choices and their consequences – not looking to blame external factors. What this means is that you may decide it’s not the right time to re-train or take a different career step using your transferable skills, for example, and that’s fine as long as you (a) consider when would be the right time and don’t forget to revisit this choice and (b) don’t get stuck with a status quo that you are not happy with and always wonder what could have been.

Who knows .. in a few years’ time you could be hearing the words ‘And the winner is… [insert your name here!]’