Your planning

Planning for opportuities (living your career vision)

How are you making your career vision a reality? What are the small, practical steps you are taking to move closer to your vision? You are preparing yourself for opportunities that you do not yet know about. You need to be curious about your environment in order to identify opportunities and to be aware of what is out there and how you could participate.

Curiosity helps you to recognise and activate your external and internal resources (for example, asking others for help; finances; your belief in yourself) and builds a tolerance for failure since you are aware of other opportunities to pursue. In addition to curiosity, you also need to prepare yourself for the unknown.If you are thinking about preparing yourself for opportunities, you will:

• be pro-active in developing opportunities;
• do reality checks to manage disappointments more effectively; and
• take control of how you respond to things - how to land on your feet.

Prepare for the unknown

Take small steps to develop and build confidence: small steps help you to develop mastery in order to distinguish yourself from other graduates and to be confident that you can deal with the unknown.

Answer the following questions:

1. What do I want?
2. What do I need to do to get what I want?
3. What must I do to prepare myself for a broad range of opportunities?
4. How should I present myself to others?
5. Who am I selling my product (me) to?
6. How do I want to help others?
7. How will I see that I am ready for opportunities?
8. How much risk am I willing to take to get to where I want to be?
9. How do I recognise and appreciate the value of opportunities presented to me?