What is Career Imagination?
By Elizabeth Bowker
Career Imagination is about envisioning what’s truly possible for your work life. It’s about dreaming, shifting, adapting and believing: believing in your dream and believing in yourself. This is followed by making an actionable plan.
In the process we start by asking what would you be doing if there were no limits, no doubts, no distractions? What makes you feel like you’re doing the work you were meant to do? What does your ideal workday feel like? Imagine the sky at its bluest.
Dream Big
Most people dream too small, so challenge yourself to think big and be bold. If you build a strong plan and stay committed, you'll probably get there. This is how dreams become real—by daring to name them and then doing the work. Extraordinary careers aren’t just for extraordinary people. Every day, regular people create work lives they love. And every day ordinary people create extraordinary opportunities. You can too.
In your Career Imagination consider lots of options. Set goals that might have seemed impossible in the past. Start to feel like wonderful careers can happen to ordinary people, because they do — it’s true — every day. This is my motto!
Family responsibilities, health problems, or a lack of formal education can make it harder, but you can still get that really satisfying next job or new career. It might look different than you first thought. It might take a little longer than you would like. But in the end, the dream needs to fit you.
Make a Detailed Plan
Once you’ve imagined the wonderful job of your dreams, you need a plan to make it real. Part of that planning is understanding the world you want to work in and the trends shaping that part of the labor market so that you head in a direction where employers are hiring and you have the skills they’re looking for. A good plan will help you set a clear path with reduced risk. It should be tailored to you, your dreams, your values, and your family. In the end, you’ll arrive at the right place with expectations and confidence to match the opportunity. If you need help making a plan, I have a workbook and a web series coming out in the next few weeks that will walk you through the steps of dreaming and plan making.
IRL
In my journey to learn more about what people want from work and how this might change over a lifetime, I interviewed more than a hundred people with a wide variety of experiences, and I learned what leads to career success for the ordinary person with an ordinary education — and usually some big dreams. I talked to people like you. People who need achievable strategies to get where they want to be, not fantastic advice that feels out of reach.
One of the first people I met with was Ava. She told me she’d worked as an accountant, but it was not a satisfying career path for her. She was also a passionate music fan who wasn’t afraid to dream big about how she could make music into her career. She polished up her Career Imagination, putting a lot of thought into leaving a sure thing for a dream thing, and in the end, she did it. Ava left the firm and took a master’s degree in music management in Manchester, UK. Today, she works in music promotion in London and has even done some producing. She’s played a part in developing some of the best contemporary music on the planet in one of its most exciting cities. She meets with musicians, managers, and record labels and goes to some of the best concerts in the world. She still works with spreadsheets, but she’s having a lot more fun. Ava dreamed it, and she did it.
When I interviewed Vaneese, I heard something familiar. After years of working in service jobs, she was ready for change. She said she wanted something more and had already imagined it — her own business selling perfume under her own name. She knows someone who can develop this for her, and she’s learned what she needs to do for tax purposes, but she still needs to know more about the perfume market to sell and distribute her product. In the process, she might find a more suitable product that’s in demand and that she understands. Vaneese needs a little more work on her dream and a more developed plan, but she’s got some good Career Imagination going for her!
Ava and Vaneese both understand that dreams must be grounded in reality. We don’t work in a vacuum. What’s happening in the world around us affects what jobs are available, the quality of those jobs, and the likelihood of our professional success and satisfaction. The world right now is volatile and uncertain — you already know that. In the face of change, we adapt and, hopefully, better things follow. The good news here is that there’s a lot you can do to direct your career so you can enjoy the work you want, when and where you want. We call this “decent” work, and everyone deserves it.
We’re new!
The Career Imagination Lab is new in the Fall of 2025. It’s not only a new project, it’s a new career for me. I hope that here you will find the tools you need to make the career shift that will lead you to more fulfilling work.
Good luck and best wishes for the job of your dreams. May you meet the right people along the way and enjoy the journey.