Everyone tells you that you must have a clear vision of where you want to go and who you want to be. Not everyone tells you exactly how – and how not – to get to that vision.
For example, suppose you want a life in which you are well paid and appreciated for your work. You want warm relationships and the time to pursue them.
But suppose your nagging belief is that it’s simply not possible. After all, you’ve spent years piling up evidence to tell you that.
So you sit down, meditate, and envision in exact detail what you want. You then open your eyes and everything is still the same.
Vision isn’t enough
A fellow coach tells the story of a woman to whom he was talking. She had a serious weight problem, and he asked her what she was doing to challenge it. She replied that she sat on her sofa every day for thirty minutes and visualized herself losing weight.
That, of course, was the problem. Vision should be the carrot that draws you forward, taking the steps necessary to reach that dream. It should not be a dream in which you submerge yourself in fantasy, waiting for things to happen.
It’s not enough to dream; you must walk the walk.
So you say, “OK, I’ve tried that, and I’m exhausted. I mapped out all the steps, followed them carefully, and it still didn’t work.” Maybe that was the problem.
Throw away the list
One of the reasons we fall into despair over the seeming impossibility of meeting our vision is that we believe we have walked the path leading to that vision – perhaps many times – yet we’ve never reached that Promised Land.
What probably happened was this: you made a list of the logical (to you) steps you needed to take to get there.
You started to follow those steps. You brushed aside distractions.
At some point, you were blocked, or exhausted, or rejected, or disheartened. You lost your dream.
It’s a little like taking a path that’s edged with a tall, thorny hedge. That hedge gets in the way, and you can’t even see the fields on either side of the path, fields filled with blooming flowers and sparkling brooks. All you can see is the rocky path ahead and the thorny hedge walling you in.
Maybe some of those “distractions” were not actually wrong paths at all, but alternate, pleasanter, and faster ways to get to where you want to be.
So don’t make that rigid plan. An inspiring vision opens you up to all the possibilities in your environment that you haven’t seen before.
Truly creative people don’t use lists: they pay a lot of attention to their vision and notice everything in the present that confirms its reality.
Lynette Crane is a Minneapolis-based nationally-acclaimed speaker, writer (author of The Confident Introvert), and Executive Coach for introverts.. She has more than 30 years’ experience in the field of stress and time management and personal growth. She now focuses on helping “quietly brilliant” people (aka introverts) thrive and not just survive in an extrovert culture – without becoming extroverts.
She is currently doing research for her next book, The Introvert CEO, and welcomes suggestions as to who might be a good person to interview.
if you want to “thrive and not just survive” as an introvert, contact me at Lynette@QuietBrlilianceConsulting.com.
Visit her website at http://www.QuiteBrillianceConsulting.com/ to learn more about her company and to see more articles.
