Your Vision for 2015

What is your vision?  If you’re already clear about your vision for the coming year, congratulate yourself for being exceptionally well organized, inspired and on top of your game. 

If your answer is “I don’t know” or you just haven’t had the time or the energy to craft your vision, here are some suggestions for gaining clarity.

1.       Determine the parts of your life to focus on. It’s easier and less overwhelming if you pick a few key areas.  Assess your level of satisfaction in the following: Career/Business, Financial, Relationships – intimate and social, Health & Wellness, Home environment, Personal Growth or Spirituality, Fun & Recreation.  Choose two to four areas that you’re least satisfied with. Focusing on these will bring the greatest rewards.

2.       State what you want. It’s really easy to say, I’m overwhelmed  (or bored) with my job, I don’t like my relationship, I’m broke, my social life sucks, I don’t like where I’m living.  You can start with that, but turn those thoughts into positive intention statements. For example instead you could say - In 2015…

a.       My work is stimulating and manageable.

b.      I am in a loving relationship

c.       My financial situation is improving

d.      My network of friends are supportive and positive

e.      I live in a home that I love.

3.       Be inspired.  If you’re experiencing a lack luster response to creating your vision, it may be that you are stressed or lacking energy.  One of the things I commit to each year is having some downtime between Christmas and New Year for rejuvenation and inspiration.  After a few days of rest and quiet my energy is restored and the future looks brighter.  What rejuvenates you?

4.       Engage your imagination. If you are too focused and analytical when you are creating your vision it’s difficult to see possibilities. If you are stuck on a linear, logical track take a break and engage your senses. Go for a walk, listen to music, get out into nature and breathe deeply.  When your mind is relaxed there is more room for imagination.

5.       De-stress When stressed we become very linear and focused and it’s much harder to access imagination and inspiration.  Did you know that shifting how you’re looking at things, literally, from narrow focus to taking in your peripheral vision calms the mind and reduces stress? Try it.

6.       Use divination tools Throw the i-ching, rune stones, lay out a tarot spread, or pull wisdom cards to guide your process.  This is a great way to shift from logical to creative thinking. For example, at a gathering with friends on the solstice we used the i-ching.  We each asked a question about something we’d like to focus on for the year and the reading gave us insights on how to approach it. 

7.       Share your vision Explore and share your vision with a trusted, supportive friend or partner.  Make it more real by talking about it, seeing yourself in it, feeling the experience of it. Perhaps, you could enlist this person as an accountability partner.

8.       Take Action if you want your vision to become reality your thoughts and statements need to become goals with action steps that you can and will take.   Now you can shift your focus back from expansive and imaginative to narrow and linear to make it happen.

9.       Have fun Choose goals and actions that you enjoy. Or find some way to make the hard stuff more enjoyable. Get help, share the load, and reward yourself for small accomplishments.

10.   Be grateful, always. Appreciating what you have keeps you in a much happier place and validates your ability to have and create more.

Still Need Help?  Hire a coach

Lynne Brisdon, PCC

lynne@livinginvision.com

 

Your Vision for 2010

What’s your vision?

Do you have one for your business or career path? Is it aligned with your personal vision? Having a clearly defined vision, increases the odds you will bring your desires to fruition. Ask any successful business person and you will find they started out with some sort of a vision.

Working closely with start-up entrepreneurs provides me with an insider’s view of what happens in the first year of operations. Those most likely to succeed are the ones who have a clear vision, which resonates deeply within.

Often inspired, these business owners have a clear image of where their business is going. One story I heard a few years ago from the founder of a now multi-national franchise chain started when he was a student looking for summer work. Eating at the Golden Arches one day he noticed a pick-up truck full of junk at the drive through window. “I can do that”, he thought and within a couple of years had 3 or 4 trucks running. Knowing he wanted to achieve growth, and inspired by “Good to Great” Jim Collins, he mapped out a five year vision plan. When I heard Brian Scudimore speak in 2003, he was a month away from that 5 year goalpost. 1-800-Got-Junk was situated in 29 of the 30 cities he’d envisioned and was 3 stores away from the 150 he’d targeted. Oh yes, he was in negotiations with new franchise owners in city number 30. Impressive! To this day you’ll find revenue and growth targets emblazoned across a vision wall at the “Junction,” the company’s head office in Vancouver.

A vision doesn’t necessarily come in a blinding flash of inspiration. It can be crafted, dreamt up; sometimes it is a subtle feeling of recognition, at others it seems like a far off and distant fantasy. A vision may constantly be amended as we move through time and learn new information. Ideally it is aligned with your core values and your highest intentions. (see last month’s post on Intention) The vision that comes to fruition is the one that is believed and that we are compelled to move toward; the one we never let die.

Living Your Vision
Achieving it has everything to do with experiencing the possibility of it becoming real in the present moment. Consider that you have a particular business milestone you would like to attain. Perhaps it is serving a particular number of clients, speaking to a group of a certain size, or for many of us there are specific financial targets we want to hit. Imagine for a few moments that your vision has been attained. Let yourself fully experience what that feels like, imagine the scenarios associated with this achievement: the activities you’d be engaged in; the sights, the sounds, even the smells. Allow yourself to ‘live’ in your vision for a few moments. Doing this starts to build synaptic connections in your mind so you can recognize the opportunities that lead you to fulfill your vision more immediately. Not to mention all the metaphysical principles which come into play when you focus on your vision. “Ask and it is given”, “Believe it and you can achieve it” “Boldness has genius in it, begin it now”. These are not empty words, but quotes from masters who achieved great things.

Sometimes we get stuck envisioning what we don’t want. The propensity to worry about the future and imagine the worst possible outcome is due to the human trait of gravitating to negative potentials. But consider how much energy it takes to keep insisting and convincing yourself, based on previous experience, that something bad will happen. What if you directed the same amount of energy toward believing that what you desire can happen too? If you find that you are habitually projecting negative outcomes you may have some internal barriers to resolve before your vision can be realized.

Vision is quite simply having a clear sense of where you would like to go. If you need more clarity or should you need to resolve some internal barriers, help is available.

Lynne Brisdon
BC: 604 570-0764
WA: 360-393-8996
lynne@livinginvision.com


Join Lynne Brisdon and Jacque Small of Catalyst Business Coaching for a conversation about Vision on the Catalyst-LIVE! Radio Show on Wednesday, January 6th at 12 noon. Follow the link below to register.


http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/XGM3SW23U4G1UEPJ

Clarifying your Intention

As we get closer to the end of the year we start to cast our thoughts and desires toward the coming year.

Want to have a full sense of enjoyment and satisfaction in life? Want better work life balance, more simplicity and ease? To be successful you need to know what you want to experience, and the outcomes you would like to be participating in.

Knowing clearly what you like and what you want comes from a deeper place than logical analysis of likes and dislikes. This sense of knowing comes from being in connection with who you really are and being able to access your intuition. Your ability to be present to your intuition and perceive what’s next on your path brings clarity to your intention. Intention statements come from a place of deep inner knowing.

Intention Statements
An intention statement is a declaration of who and how you will “Be” in the experiences you want to have. Who you are “being” is a conscious choice to live into your desired experiences and have the feelings you most want to feel.

Intention statements can relate to broad aspects of your life such as experiences you’d prefer in work or business or they can be more narrowly focused on a specific event or series of events.

An Event Specific Intention
Say you have an up-coming sales presentation that is vital for your business. In addition to preparing the presentation there is the question of what you would like your experience to be during this meeting.

A good intention for this situation might be to be “present, grounded and curious in every moment”. The experience that you desire might be one of being focused and engaged in an easy and open dialogue.

The Global Intention
The global or broad scope intention relates to overarching experiences you want to have in your life. What would you be doing? What would be happening? What inspires you? When you are inspired, how do you feel?

Your global intention might sound something like this: I am an internationally recognized coach and trainer. I collaborate with fantastic business partners with ease and enthusiasm, inspiring and being inspired. My business allows me to travel, write, speak and deliver training events all around the world. My work and recreational activities are intertwined and I flow between them with fun and excitement. I live a vibrant, abundant and meaningful life and my work allows me the freedom to enjoy nature’s splendour and the planet's magnificent beauty.

Barriers to Intention
Most of us have a hard time coming up with clear and authentic intentions because we’ve lost touch with our intuition. To sense what is right, we need to have access to our intuition, our gut feelings, which provide us with direction. Too often we override our gut instincts in favour of an analytical story that our mind has created as the logical solution.

The biggest barriers to being present to our intuition are feelings of overwhelm tied to struggle and feeling alone. We ignore our intuition because we want to avoid feeling overwhelmed by the experience intuition is informing us about. For example, you have an inspired vision to become internationally recognized expert in your field but you get nervous about being in the public eye, so you let the vision die.

Fear and anxiety are great examples of feeling overwhelmed. We have a gut feeling about something we want to do but then we override the gut feeling with various sensations of doubt. We then cancel out any action we would have taken to follow through on our intuition.

As a result we feel stuck in the same old places we have always been. We feel trapped by our circumstances and don’t feel like we can move forward to have the life we truly want.

Solution
The good news is that we’re not stuck with these barriers. We can delete overwhelm, anxiety, fear, doubt, from our human software to gain full access to our intuition and knowing of what we truly want. Deleting these barriers is like deleting a virus off of a computer. We no longer have to live with the notion that it’s “just the way we are”. Contact me to learn how.

Join me in a converstion about INTENTION at noon on December 2 - follow the link to register.
http://myaccount.maestroconference.com/conference/register/K7BURW1PYW2LVW1