Whether you plan to travel, relocate or change up your career – having a clear vision is vital to get you there. I attended a fantastic business seminar the other week where the presenter introduced the idea of ‘building a straight fence’ and in order to do so, the first post you pin down is the one furthest away from you. Regardless if it’s in business or life, most people go about planning for a week, a month or maybe even a year at a time. And then somehow life gets in the way and we kind of forget about the big vision because we are ‘too busy’ just living and reacting or responding to the events who come our way. The key thing to remember is that this will mean that you build a very crooked fence.
Now you might think that ‘Life is for living and I don’t want to be that serious about my vision!”. I’m not suggesting you should have a step by step plan for all the days and years for the rest of your life. Instead I’d like to invite you to dream big and build your own vision for where you’d like to be 10 – 20 years from now. Wouldn’t that be pretty cool?
The cornerstones of the coaching I do with my clients works in two key steps to helps overcome the busyness and introduce clarity, vision and focus:
- Firstly we work inwards and do some serious core finding. It’s hard to know what to aim for before we’ve made peace with who we are, what we’re good at and what ‘fills our energy bucket‘ (I’ve written a post about core finding before – read more here if you’re curious). There are many ways to do this, but I believe in clear steps to help people through this, so our process for this is very tangible and easy to follow in just a few sessions. The key here is to walk away with key criteria that you can measure opportunities and events against in the future to stay focused and happy.
- Secondly we look towards the future and build your vision based on the core of who YOU are. Your vision is yours, and every time we try to live other peoples values or visions and they don’t resonate with us we feel low on energy and out of sync. Of course you will have some loved ones in your life who want different things compared to what you want. But life is not black or white and it does not have to be your way or their way. Knowing your vision is what’s going to help you build a straight fence next to a loved one, rather than one that leads you away from them.
Naturally this means that there are some things in life we may no longer have room for and I often refer to this as the emotional wardrobe clean-out. If you’re serious about having a vision and life that fills you with joy most days (yes, even when you’re living your passion there are hard days too!) then you need to be willing to let go of people, events and things that no longer serve you. This is usually the most painful point for many people, because fundamentally we have a core need to be liked, accepted and loved. If you’d like to know more about how this actually works, feel free to get in touch here!