What is your dream?

The training is about to start, two confident, elegantly dressed ladies are already sitting in front of the room, sipping tea waiting for everyone else to settle down. They are obviously the leaders.

Fourteen of us are fidgeting, still trying to settle down to the chairs arranged as a circle around the leaders. Two assistants are sitting behind us, observing us all. Finally, everyone gets seated and there is a tense silence of expectation. The attendees are eyeing each other trying to figure out who else is attending, weighing each other somewhat, browsing the name tags we are wearing.

It is exactly one week after the coup attempt in my county, we are all shaken. The uncertainties around what could have happened and what could still happen is like a grey dirty fog of fear and sadness that fills everywhere we go.

Three weeks ago, I have left my job as the CIO of a Holding and decided to enjoy the summer and look for a new job in September. My husband is in USA on a long training program. I manage to send my son to Boston, to the summer school he had enrolled in, just 3 days after the coup attempt. I was scheduled to join my husband for two weeks of vacation, we cancelled it.

Several days after my son left, I was thinking about what I can do to use this alone-time productively and to take my mind off the unfolding events. I remembered the coaching training that a friend had attended years ago and raved about. She is a senior HR executive and had attended the training for personal development. I went online, found the site and saw that there is a training scheduled in only few days. I called the company and enrolled just for the first module. The training was full, I could enroll only because someone cancelled the last moment. It must be fate.

As we are sitting in the few moments of silence, I feel disoriented. I am most comfortable when I have a web of goals that I am frantically working towards. I often proudly say that “I am like a ballistic missile, once to fire me to a target, I will hit it no matter what. Therefore you better aim it to the correct target!” At this point, I don’t think I have a target, at least any target that I really want.

Suddenly, one of the front-of-the-room leaders gets up, walks toward me while gesturing for me to stand up. I stand up, as she arrives in front of me. We are face to face. She has big beautiful eyes that are at this moment locked into mine. Our hearts are aligned, I can feel the genuine warmth of her presence. With sincere curiousity she says:

“Nilgün what is your dream?”

I freeze, I am shocked, I am trying to make sense of this sentence. I realize that I am startled because no one else has ever asked me this question before. I am even more surprised because I don’t know what to say. With this realization, emotions are triggered, a tide of shame rises in my body as my face flushes. My heart starts pounding with performance anxiety. I am acutely aware of the 16 pair of eyes staring at me, waiting for my response. The saboteur in my mind is yelling ‘She must have chosen you because you are older and look confident, and you don’t know what to say! You are a very experienced executive, over 50 years old, how can you not know what your dream is!”. After what seems like eternity, words spilled from my mouth unconsciously:

“I want to learn coaching, to complement my skills and develop projects to help professionals, especially for IT people who are very left brain oriented and would benefit tremendously this work.”

She says thank you, and we continue with an exercise of asking each other our dreams.

Afterwards for many days even some months, I reflected deeply on this question, also on some other equally important questions:

·      What do I want to do with the rest of my life?

·      How do I want to be remembered?

·      What do I do best?

·      What do I enjoy doing the most?

·      What are the financial and social risks of taking a totally different self-employed path? How can I mitigate them?

We are living so much of our life on cruise control, without deliberately finding out and pursuing dreams. Yes, we determine many goals as status symbols or as right things to do, that are often imposed upon us, that are the next level of something we already did. Mind you that dreams are living phenomena, they are born, they grow, transform and sometimes even die. We should keep re-visiting your dreams. What was your dream 10 years ago is probably different than what your dream is now, after coming such a long way. Moreover, you may have different dreams for different parts of your life, for example work versus social versus health, etc.

A lot of times, when you ask people what they want, they tell you in great detail what they do not want. However, to give your subconscious direction and create momentum, you should clarify what you actually want, not what you want to avoid. The endless thought stream in our mind makes it very difficult to focus on our innermost desires. If we reflect deeply though, if we give ourselves time and space exploring on these powerful questions, eventually we get the answers.

The following months since then, I have rejected corporate job offers, have completed my training as a coach, started my coaching certification process and set up my own company to do IT consulting, digital transformation consulting, coaching and mentoring.

Questions can be so powerful. That single question acted like yeast, a starter. Since then I feel like all my professional and personal experience, my know-how, skills I developed, new skills I am learning are merging, fermenting, rising and taking me to a totally new place.

Although I have enjoyed working in great companies and with wonderful teams for 26 years, I have decided that at this stage of my life I want to work differently. Based on the Pareto principle, when you have corporate responsibilities, you spend maximum 20 percent of your time on truly strategic activities. I call this time the strategic zone; it is working on things that make significant contribution, doing work that you are uniquely great at, that inspires you and of course learning and investing in yourself. The other 80 percent of your time is spent on what I call overhead; things such as administrative problems, bureaucracy, procedures, unproductive meetings, office politics, etc.

My dream for the remainder of my working life, is to spend my time in the strategic zone and to constantly have choice. Choice in what projects I will do, choice in who I will work with, choice in where I will work physically and choice in how much and when to take vacation.

I want to help companies with digitalization and innovating by leveraging technology. I want to support individuals and companies by coaching and mentoring, so that they can transform to reach their dreams.

Dear reader, “What is your dream?"