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The Castle Process for Designing your Life and Career
Welcome to a space where dreams aren't just wishes—they're blueprints for a life filled with purpose and passion.
This site is dedicated to learners, dreamers, and those committed to living a life that resonates with meaning. Here, you'll find a supportive network of like-minded individuals, valuable resources, and opportunities to share your journey.
Whether you're just beginning to explore your passions or you're well on your way, our community is here to help you dream big, and achieve deeply.
Join us in serious dreaming—because your dreams deserve to be taken seriously.
You are embarking on a lifetime journey
Tools for the Adventure
Embarking on a journey to design your life and career is an empowering step toward creating the future you’ve always dreamed of. We believe in taking your dreams seriously, and we’re here to help you every step of the way.
Our team will work closely with you, providing the guidance and support needed to craft a life that reflects your personal and professional aspirations.
The materials for your trip include:
- The Castle Guide: This 80-page guide will be your resource you'll use to craft your dream.
- The Castle Poster: The castle on the poster has seven towers on which you put sticky notes with your answers to seven questions – Who, What, When, Where, Why, How, How Much – and one tower on which you summarise your answers as your Serious Dream. Your castle inspires you with towers soaring upward toward your dreams and your castle supports you with solid foundations grounded in reality. The castle is a visual symbol of The Castle Process: A goal is a dream taken seriously.
- Access to the Castle Library: You'll be granted access to this treasure trove of materials and learnings for your continued journey.
Together, let’s design the life and career you truly deserve.
Why a Castle?
Castles are an appropriate image for designing our lives because they represent two different things simultaneously. Castles are airy, fantastic, dream-like visions soaring upward, and Castles are grounded on rock, solid as forever. We love the wonderful double image of castles.
To design your life you need a dream-like vision that you turn into rock-solid reality. You have to dream and you have to take the dream seriously.
Walt Hopkins first created The Castle Process in 1980, when he originated the statement, "A goal is a dream taken seriously".
Creating Your Future: Designing Your Life and Career
As you create this lifetime journey, you continue to ask seven LifeTime questions:
- How do I get what I want?
- Where do I want to be?
- What do I want to do?
- Who do I want to be with?
- Why do I want to do this?
- How much do I want?
- When do I want to begin?
Through the process working with others to answer these questions, your Serious Dream begins to unfold.
Fountain and Funnel
As you answer each question, you burst forth—like a fountain—with a whole range of possible answers. Then you focus—like a funnel—on the answers that are most important to you. You probably prefer either fountain work or funnel work. To create your Serious Dream, you must do both. You must consider lots of possibilities and you must make lots of clear choices.
Image with Words
As you generate your fountain of possibilities, you'll use your Learnings Journal to keep everything together. As you set priorities, you'll further funnel your choices around Partners, Place, Powers, People, Purpose, Pay, and Possibilities.
Group and Solo
Some of the time you work with a group—especially when you are gathering ideas or want to get reactions to your decisions. At other times, you work alone to develop your own ideas and make your own decisions. This is not a solo effort, you have partners who we'll bring to help.
Action and Reflection
You may be tempted to race through the questions. Remember to pause regularly for reflection. Go for a walk or look out the window. Think about your answers for a while. Then think about nothing for a while.
Does this process really work?
Yes. You can get almost anything you want as long as you are willing to give up almost anything else. Michelangelo and Donatello envisioned their sculptures within the marble and then removed the superfluous marble.
Look into the marble of your life for the vision of your future. Keep that vision very clear in your mind as you gradually take away everything that does not belong to your vision. Focus on your Serious Dream.
What Others Say about The Castle Process
"This was a wonderful opportunity to allow my head and my heart to speak to each other. That conversation focused me on a shift in my career that has led to deeply satisfying work that I know is making a real contribution." - Marianne Erdelyi - Consultant to top management teams
"Castle is a good name for this work: the foundations of a castle are firmly planted on the ground, but the spires, like the dreams we all have of what we could be if we only dared, reach toward the stars." - Shelagh Aitken
Editor