I had a conversation this week that I want to share with you.
A client I am working with said she wanted to really buckle down. She knows she wants things to be different. She is full of ideas and insights, but she wants to be doing something concrete to see results. She’s tired of where she is and she wants success.
So I asked her what she wants to be doing, thinking, feeling, and being twelve months from now that would mean that she had achieved this success.
And she was surprised that she had a difficult time answering.
Here’s the thing.
One of the reasons that smart, busy women do not succeed with their personal goals is because they don’t have a crystal clear vision of what success will look like or they don’t have absolute clarity about what they want.
It may sound crazy, but it’s not. How often have you been so busy that it feels like you are just moving from one urgent action item to another? When this happens, it’s oh-so-easy to get lost in the trees and not have a good view of the forest. It’s easy to move through life “doing things” without taking the time to really plot out the things you want to be doing and the end destination that you want to achieve.
When this happens, when we’re not clear on what we want, what our dreams are, what we want our lives to feel like, we end up feeling stuck, or stressed, or burnt out, or even massively successful but unhappy with how our life feels.
And yes, all of this is a recipe for habits that don’t serve us, overeating to soothe ourselves, losing ourselves in activities that numb us out, and a cycle that leads to more of the same.
When you don’t know what you want, the first step isn’t action.
The first step is painting the clearest, colorful vision that you can of where you want your hard work, and your precious time and energy to take you.
The first step is to answer the question, “What do I want to be doing, thinking, feeling, and being 12 months from now?”
Creating a vision that lights you on fire is not only the first step, it’s incredibly powerful and it will help you take action toward identifying the assets you’ll need to use, the support you’ll need, and the specific action steps you are going to want to take.
If your goal isn’t crystal clear, you’ll spend precious energy wandering around in the dark.
How do you create your vision? There are lots of tools to help with this. In Your Missing Peace participants experiment with powerful questions, with journaling, and with guided visualizations. Our coaching sessions help members get clarity on what works – and what doesn’t.
Not every tool is a fit for every person. The crucial element is to give yourself the space and the place to ask the right questions.
Who do you want to meet when you look in the mirror next December? How do you want to feel? Knowing your most honest answers to these questions can change your life. It has certainly changed mine.
Talk soon,
