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Years ago, I interviewed James Patterson, an advertising manager, about the latest campaign. But all he wanted to talk about was fiction-writing. "I hope to be a writer. It is always in my head," he said.
I remember thinking: Sure, you and everybody else.
A decade or so later, however, I was surprised to see James on TV, holding up his new book.
Mr. Patterson's ability to see himself as a writer illustrates a concept known as "possible selves." The term, coined in 1986 by the social psychologists Hazel Markus and Paula Nurius, grew out of research on self-concept. While self-concepts – "I am a kind person" or "I am a good parent"- are rooted in the present, the researchers found people are also informed by ideas about what they might become and how they might change.
These possible selves, both positive and negative, are closely related to motivation. A violin student who envisions life as a professional musician might be motivated to practice. A person whose feared possible self is an alcoholic may become a non-drinker. In a small study, when young adults were encouraged to envision themselves as either regular exercisers (hoped-for selves) or inactive(feared selves), both groups exercised more in the weeks afterward.
A possible self can take you beyond daydreams, which are often not necessarily grounded in reality. It can come to fruition if you build a bridge from your "now" self to the possible self. "If you're regularly dreaming of a different career, enroll in a course, shadow someone, take up a hobby or a side job. Making the transition requires you to say now, today, this week, these are the steps I can actually take to attain the goal," said Daphna Oyserman, a psychology professor at the University of Southern California.
But don't quit your job just yet. An analysis of career-transition research concluded that successful reinventions require adjustments and re-evaluations as you go. Mr. Patterson, for example, wrote almost a dozen books while still at his ad agency; he found his style only after many tries.
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