Do you have a vision for the life you’d love? Do you know what would be a slam dunk for you in 2023?
The starting point of all successful achievement is having a clear vision of what it is you want to achieve. There is a great saying that there is no wind favourable to the sailor who has no destination in mind! In the absence of a vision you have no sense of direction and no way of discerning what is an opportunity or what is an obstacle. So do yourself a favour this year and start as you mean to continue, with a clear vision for results you’d love.
To support you in your efforts, I’m sharing here 3 strategies to create a vision you love.
Make it a full spectrum Vision
A full spectrum vision incorporates your health and wellbeing, your relationships with self, others and your higher power, your vocation and how you share your talent with the world (paid or unpaid) and your time and money freedom. You can see straight away that this goes way beyond New Years Resolutions (apologies if you’re sick of hearing about them already!). One major reason why it is important to have a holistic vision is that it helps you to avoid making trade offs between one part of your life and another.
Lots of people get stuck in either/or thinking. For example, people often think either I can have the professional success I want or I can have time for my relationships/ my health/my hobbies. Or they believe that in order to live healthily, they have to sacrifice their social life. What are the trade offs that you are making currently?
You want to create a vision for your life that includes everything you’d love. You can set things up so that you can have impact in your professional life and be happy in love. You can be healthy and successful. You can have time for hobbies and me time as well as being a great parent. You get to decide! You are the person who is creating your results and you have the opportunity to create new results exactly as you’d love them. So make a decision to create clarity around what you would love in all 4 domains of your full spectrum life.
2 Signals for growth
Many of us as adults have stopped dreaming. Frankly, from about age 7 most of us have been told to grow up, get real and STOP (day) dreaming. It is quite likely that reading this you’re thinking, I don’t know what I want.
So let me help you out with that. You don’t have to work in the dark here. You and I are receiving two signals for growth, all day everyday. These signals are our longings and our discontents. Let’s unpack that together.
Longing – the desire to be, do, have, give, create something
I’d love to live by the sea, I’d love a new job, I’d love to give to the cause I most care about without worrying about where the money is coming from. You see a photograph of someone out sailing or reading by a cosy fire in comfortable surroundings and you think, I’d love that. Those longings are life calling you to more.
Discontent – dissatisfaction and unhappiness with current circumstances
The feelings of dissatisfaction are there so that you make a different choice. A huge discontent of mine before I became my own boss and worked from home was my daily commute. It was costing me about 3 hours each day that I went to the office and I hated it. It felt like such a waste of time and opportunity. It was one of the things that helped me shape a vision for life as a solopreneur working from home. What are your discontents in your health, relationships, vocation and time and money freedom?
Spend some time journaling on your longings and discontents in each area of your full spectrum life, get clear about what you long to experience differently and what the current challenges and discontents are.
Then ask yourself the only question you ever really need to answer to shape your vision:
What would I love?
