Possible selves

Possible Selves

Clients seek our help for a range of reasons. Sometimes they are unsure what route to take; sometimes they know where they want to go, but don’t know how to get there, or perhaps don’t feel quite confident enough or motivated enough to take the plunge. As practitioners we need to have a range of approaches which we can select from, to make sure that each career conversation is the most useful it can be. We all have our favourite tools and techniques which we find most effective, but new ideas and techniques are always welcome. One approach which seems to hold some promise for career practitioner is working with clients’ possible selves. More empirical evidence is needed to build a complete picture but the early signs are that this approach can help clients to identify and clarify their career goals, to work out what they need to do next, and to motivate themselves to keep going. The notion of possible selves links to the idea of career as identity, which has gained some currency in theory and practice in the last few years, as we have acknowledged that when people make career choices they are thinking more about ‘Who do I want to be?’ than ‘What do I want to do?’.  And it seems to be a technique which practitioners and clients both find fairly accessible and quite good fun.

What are possible selves?

A possible self is one idea of ‘me in the future’. It’s a story we tell ourselves about ourselves in different situations in the future. We can have a number of them at any one time. They can be expected possible selves  hoped for, or feared, and they could be realistic, or fanciful. It may start as a vague, fuzzy idea but for a possible self to be a powerful tool in career practice, it needs go further. First it needs to be both visual and narrative – an individual will need to actually picture themselves in the future, and they need to put some of the ideas into words and tell it as a story. The possible self needs to be consistent with the person’s self-concept - they need to be able to see this future self as a plausible version of themselves. And the possible self also needs to be ‘pre-experienced’. This means that during the visualisation, it needs to be as vivid as possible, to the point at which the individual is almost experiencing being this future version of themselves. 

What’s the evidence for how they work?

There has been a fair bit written about possible selves in a number of settings. Herminia Ibarra was an early adopter and proposed an approach to practice which uses possible selves as a way to help people making midlife career choices. She suggests that people who are considering making a change should try their new possible selves on for size before they take the plunge: getting some experience in their suggested new field before they cut off ties with their old organisation. But possible selves can also help at an earlier stage, to allow people to work out which options to try. Studies in the UK have shown that encouraging young people to work with their possible selves has allowed them to become clearer about what kind of future they want, has enabled them to work out what steps they need to take, and has kept them more motivated for longer. 

What’s the underpinning theory?

So far so good. A possible selves intervention, which aims to make an individual’s future as clear, vivid and real as possible has been shown to help people identify their career goals and work harder to realise the. But as evidence based practitioners, we are keen to understand what we are doing and why it is effective. So, how does it work?

First it helps with goal setting. A possible self allows people to translate hypothetical future events into current goals. A vague notion that being a doctor might be a good plan for the future becomes personal and plausible, as you envisage yourself in that role. A whole host of literature about goal setting has shown that the right kind of goals at the right level of challenge can help us to identify the steps we need to take, motivate us to keep going and encourage the creativity needed to identify alternative strategies if our approach doesn’t seem to be working.

Another cognitive mechanism which possible selves taps into, is that it plays around with your future time perspective. This is a measure of what is called ‘psychological distance’ and it refers to the degree to which people make links between their present and their future. A possible selves intervention – because it focuses on their future identity, makes clear links between the present and the future and closes the gap. This then has the effect of allowing people to see, clearly, that their actions today will have an impact on their future tomorrow. And this leads to motivation and action.

The interventions should get clients to think about their future in visual and verbal terms: to picture a possible self and tell its story. Both of these approaches add value. Putting ideas into words has been shown as a powerful tool to aid clear thinking. The idea of a future – you is often fuzzy and ill formed, but the process of describing it to another person, or writing a description down will help to get the image in sharp focus. Whilst it’s the words which clarify the thinking, it’s the images which have the power. Visualisations have been shown to tap into cognitive processes which are below the level of consciousness, so a clear and vivid image can worm its way under your skin and motivate you to keep going without you even knowing it.

Finally, the focus on a positive future can help to boost emotions. Spending some time thinking about how your life might be good in the future makes people feel positive, and has been shown to increase optimism and hope. And as well as being nice in themselves, these emotions have been shown to help people actually get jobs. 

How they work in practice

I hope you are by now sharing some of my enthusiasm for the idea of possible selves. Now let us focus on the action! There are different ways you can do this, and as far as I am aware, there is no evidence to show that one approach to a possible selves intervention is more effective than another. So whilst I will set out here how I manage the sessions, I urge you to make this you own – play around with it and identify what works best for you.

My sessions have four parts.

Part 1: identity a number of possible selves.

The first thing you need to do is encourage your client to identify a number of different possible selves. I try and get them to think broadly here, and consider some work and some personal ones, some realistic and some perhaps a bit fanciful. In my experience, inviting clients to play a little with this exercise is really useful. Sometimes clients can be so consumed by the real world that all they can see are barriers. Inviting them, quite deliberately to be a bit whimsical can help them get beyond the ‘yes but’ stage. The ‘play a little’ approach encourages them to tap into their ‘child’ ego state which can unleash some unexpected creativity. I usually ask people to see if they can identify 6 or so different futures. For some this is a very straightforward process where others struggle to come up with more than one, but, as is often the way, I find that sometimes those for whom this is hard can be those who benefit most from the exercise. 

Part 2: visualise the possible self.

In the next stage I invite my client to pick one of their possible selves (whichever one they would like to explore in more depth) and then I ask them to close their eyes and conjure up an image of this future self in their minds eye. When they have done this, I ask them to describe this image, giving me as much detail as they can. I ask open questions, encourage them to talk and then prompt them to fill in details where needed.

I then ask them a series of questions aimed at getting them to build up, explore and crystalize all aspects of this future. Here are some of the questions I often use, but I will base my conversation on their comments, or on other things I know about their values and interests.

Where are you working? What’s the atmosphere like?

Who are you working with? What are your relationships like?

When you arrive in the morning, what’s the first thing you do? What’s next?

What do you wear to work?

How do feel about going into work in the mornings?

When you tell people what you do, how do you feel?

What are your weekends like these days?

What do your family think about your new job?

What is the thing that’s most different from your current you?

Part 3 Call to action

When I feel that I have gone down this route as far as it will go, I ask them to open their eyes. At this point they are still half in the future and half in the present, and now is the time that they can capitalise on this close link to make an action plan. I ask them what is the first thing that they need to do in order to get started on their journey to this future possible self, and encourage them to think about this particular action quite specifically, covering exactly what they are going to do, when they might do it and how they could overcome any possible barriers.

Part 4: What can we learn.

Sometimes, the visualisation doesn’t immediate lead to future goal. It can be that the upshot of the process is the realisation that they don’t really want this future, or it could be that they chose to discuss a more playful fantasy possible self, in which case, honing in on what to do next isn’t necessarily the most helpful thing. In these instances, the visualisations could spark off a conversation about what the process has revealed to them about themselves – perhaps what matters to them, or which factors they now realise are non-negotiable in their futures. This can also be a fruitful discussion to have even if they have identified a future goal, as a discussion about what particularly struck them about the process can help to cement the learning and provide further motivation for them to put their plans into action.

One final thing I would like to add is that this is an approach which can be used in groups as well as in one to one settings. In a group setting, I ask people to work in pairs, coaching each other, and I challenge the ‘coach’ to try and find as much detail as they can from their ‘client’ during the session. The group sessions of course carry some aspect of risk about them, and you need to spend a bit more time setting up the exercise at the start, and providing some opportunity for follow up sessions should they be needed afterwards, but for those of us who are under pressure to provide more for less in our practice, it may be worth exploring this approach.

Conclusion

Theory, evidence and experience all point to the value of using a possible selves intervention with clients. It appears to be one useful strategy to help clients identify career goals and help to spur them into action. It is, of course, only one such technique, and as with many aspects of our career work, it will work well for some practitioners and clients and not so well for others. More research is needed to refine the exact nature of the most effective strategies, but the signs are good, and it seems that it may be a valuable addition to our practitioners’ toolkit.