What Does Your Career Escape Fantasy Reveal About You?
Get me out of here
"I'd really love to quit my job and assemble Ikea furniture," my client said to me.
She was a senior leader in an international company, overseeing manufacturing plants in multiple countries. Yet, she jokingly fantasized about leaving it all behind for black and white illustrated cartoon instructions and particle board.
And she’s not alone.
Many of my coaching clients have confessed to having secret wishes for their careers.
➡️ There was the nonprofit communication manager who dreamed of becoming a florist.
➡️ The higher education administrator who fantasized about teaching middle school gym class.
➡️ The lawyer who wondered about leading wilderness adventures for youth.
➡️ The management consultant who let it slip in her sixth coaching session that what she really wanted was to leave her desk behind and start a goat landscaping business.
➡️ And then there was the job seeker who jokingly told me, “I don’t know why I’m busting my butt trying to find a senior level job when I could just sell pictures of my feet on the internet!”
When I was a middle-manager, I dreamed of working at the front desk of a spa. I wanted to be in a place that was all about wellness, surrounded by soothing music and aromatherapy. It seemed like the opposite of where I was. I wanted something straightforward. I wanted less responsibility. I wanted peace.
How about you? When you think about climbing through the escape hatch, what do you dream of on the other side? Jot down a few notes about your career escape fantasy—we’re going to use it to pull out some clues for practical action that you can take now.
What does your career escape fantasy reveal about you?
It’s easy to dismiss our career escape fantasies as ridiculous daydreams of a burned-out professional who shouldn’t be taken seriously.
But I believe that there’s good data in these musings. If we get curious about what comes up for us, we can discover deeper clues about what we’re longing for in our work—clues that guide us toward practical action.
Take a closer look at your career escape fantasy and consider what it reveals about these three key data points:
🌟 Your Core Values
Your escape fantasy includes data about what lights you up at a core level. If you dream of opening a coffee shop, it might not be about coffee per se—it may be about craving variety, community, or connection. Look beneath the fantasy and uncover the values that aren’t fully met in your current situation.
→ What clues do you see within your fantasy about what you value?
🌟 Your Energy Signals
Escape fantasies usually emerge when you’re feeling out of place or depleted. They can highlight the elements of a different work environment that would energize rather than drain you.
→ What kind of environment do you notice in your fantasy? Are you indoors or outdoors? At a desk or moving around? Is it quiet or chaotic? How do you interact with others?
🌟 Your Unmet Needs
Your escape fantasy brings your unmet needs to the surface. If you dream of stocking shelves at a grocery store, you might be longing for clearer expectations and less complexity. Working for a landscaping company might be appealing because it entails tangible progress and the gratification of a completed project.
→ What do the responsibilities of your fantasy job allow you to feel that you don’t feel now? What specifically would you find gratifying about this type of work?
Take a look at what emerged as you answered these questions. Notice any patterns in your responses. Your fantasy is not a prescription, but rather a diagnostic tool. It gives you a rich data set that shows what’s missing, what you hunger for, and what kind of change would feel meaningful.
Bring your career escape fantasy to life
Now that you’ve worked through the data at hand, it’s time to take action. This doesn’t have to mean making dramatic and impulsive changes, like quitting your job in a super dramatic way and starting your own business—it can be micro adjustments that bring more meaning and alignment to your work life.
Apply Clues for Course Correction: The lesson isn’t necessarily to throw it all away and chase your fantasy job, but to ask: How can I bring more of what surfaced here into my current career—or shape my next step to align with it?
Remember the higher education administrator who wanted to be a middle school gym teacher? She didn’t leave her job. But she did find an opportunity within her college to periodically step in to support international student trips. A couple of times per year, she gets out from behind her desk and travels with a professor and a small group of students to new places. She gets to learn alongside them in an intensive one-week course. It gives her more of the student connection she longs for, and exposes her to a bit of the fun and chaos that comes with it. At the end of those trips, she’s energized (and a bit relieved) to return to her world of budgets and spreadsheets.
The nonprofit communications manager who wanted to be a florist took a similar approach. To her, flower arranging is an avenue for creativity, care, and meaning. When her organization’s major fundraising event was approaching, she raised her hand to serve on the event committee, taking the lead on the decor for the evening. The room full of cocktail tables and auction items became her playground for creative expression—and she chose touches that illustrated her organization’s mission and the people they serve. She infused parts of her career fantasy into her current role in order to bring it more into alignment with who she truly is.
Ask Powerful Questions About Possibility: Sometimes your fantasy isn’t a silly musing—it’s an honest-to-goodness career desire that feels impossible or unrealistic. This is an opportunity to ask yourself some powerful questions about possibility: What feels unrealistic about your dream? What evidence do you have that it is just a fantasy?
I once worked with a client who told me she kept her dream of becoming a novelist up on a metaphorical shelf. She could tell me all the reasons why she felt undeniably destined to be a writer—but also all the reasons why it would never be possible. So she kept it up there for some distant day when all of that would magically change, and in the meantime she got very comfortable with keeping it out of reach. Until we worked together. We dusted off that shelf and took things down one by one. We examined her questions about whether it would be possible and instead of stopping at “I don’t know how…” we turned those unknowns into knowns so she could act on real information. It was an uncomfortable process! She had become so used to deferring her dream that it was scary to confront it and actually make it possible. She now works as the managing editor of a literary publication as she finishes her first novel with the support of fellowship funding.
A data analyst I worked with wondered about owning a coffee shop. She wasn’t about to quit her solid-but-boring day job, but she wanted to explore the idea and what it would take to make it real. So she set up a couple of informational interviews with local café owners. They were happy to answer her questions about the day-to-day realities of their jobs, and what it was like to get their businesses up and running. She also attended a few programs at her local entrepreneurship center. In the end, she decided that she was happiest going to cafés as a patron—chit chatting with the baristas, sipping on a flat white, and being part of the hubbub while she tinkered away with numbers on her laptop from a cozy corner table. She didn’t open her own café, and that was an informed and intentional decision rather than one based on fear and not knowing.
The management consultant who admitted to dreaming about owning a goat farm initially dismissed that dream as too outlandish. She had her MBA, and she thought she had to use her education in a formal way in order to justify her degree. But with time, she realized that it was just that: a thought. She shifted her thinking. She started volunteering at a farm on the weekends. Eventually, she left her consulting job. Several years and farm jobs later, she manages a farm on a remote island in Maine. She never expected that her MBA would serve her escape fantasy, but it turns out that running a farm IS running a business, and it totally applies.
Your career escape fantasy is an opportunity to explore
Next time you find yourself shaking your head while you sarcastically rattle off a fanciful idea about your work, take a deep breath and take notice.
Your career escape fantasy is not just an off-hand comment—it’s an opportunity to explore. It can show you things about who and where you want to be, and how you can bring that version of yourself to life.
Don’t miss the chance to become yourself.
Your turn: What's your career escape fantasy? Email me and let me know. 💌
