If you want to create a thriving, sustainable career, think like someone who anticipates the future--a futurist. These are folks who suggest what might happen in the future so that people can decide what they want to make happen, according to the World Future Society.

To help you decide what you want to make happen in your career, look at how futurists contemplate the future. This includes:

Projecting trends
Say, for instance, you're thinking about becoming a massage therapist. If you research this field you'll find it's a growing profession and massage therapy is an ever-popular service, according to the American Massage Therapy Association. Their membership quadrupled in the 1990s and between 1997 and 2000 the number of American adults who reported going to a massage therapist the previous year doubled from 8% to 16%.

Forces fueling the growth trend include:

• More doctors recommending massage therapy for stress relief as part of other medical treatment
• Businesses bringing in massage therapists on-site
• Consumers more interested in complementary and alternative therapies
• The strong health and fitness movement
• Great numbers of aging baby boomers looking for ways to improve health and reduce pain and stress
• Some businesses including it as an employee benefit
• Health insurers extending coverage in some plans to include massage therapy
• Most medical schools offering courses in alternative medicine

Now plot that trend on a chart and you can project what the massage therapy business may look like over the next five to ten years to decide if it's a viable career path.

Creating scenarios
Use your imagination to think about what would happen if you became a massage therapist. Will you make more money? Make less at first? Write books and articles? Catch a disease? Help people in a new way? Be less stressed and more satisfied? Become a part of a wellness network and meet like-minded professionals? This exercise helps you imagine the possibilities and realities.

Talk to experts
People who are already in this career or related fields can offer a first-hand view of what the future holds. They can also weigh in on whether you've got what it takes. This will help you make a more educated decision about your future.

Also, see what the futurists have to say about leading trends. For instance, The Futurist magazine predicts that the "eco-economy" (an economy shaped by the principles of ecology and designed to be in sync with the earth's ecosystem) will be a major force for future careers. They claim that the aquacultural veterinarian is the hot job for the coming eco-economy. Other new career opportunities include ecological economists, wind meteorologists, recycling engineers and environmental architects.

They predict that the trend to create a sustainable eco-economy to meet the needs of future generations will also mean new career and investment opportunities in fish farming, wind-farm construction, turbine manufacturing, hydrogen generation, fuel-cell and solar-cell manufacturing, light-rail construction, bicycle manufacturing and tree planting.

Keep your eye on the future. It will be here sooner than you think.

© by Andrea Kay