Cultivate Your Vision

What does your future look like? Any ideas? There's an old adage that says "if you don't know where you're going, you'll surely never get there." In this episode I share my thoughts on curating and cultivating your vision, setting you on a course from wherever you are now, to where you want to be.

Cultivating Your Vision

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What's on your vision board right now? I asked this question to a colleague of mine who's become a pretty good buddy over the years and his answer was nothing. He says there's nothing on my vision board right now. He says I have no goals at the moment.

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Now he was in a place a bit and it was valid and he's been through a bunch of stuff and if he's listening I'm sending you a lot of love buddy. No names but this is coming up and it came up a couple times talking about vision today and I asked another colleague as we were just talking about kind of life and I said what is the vision you have for your life? And she said what do you mean? I said well what do you envision for your life? Like are you doing it right now or is there something you're yearning for or you're envisioning um you know to be realized on your journey? And she had some answers right and those answers were different from where she's at and what she's currently doing at the moment. So what about you? What is your vision for your life? What is on your vision board at the moment? What are you working towards? What are you driving towards? What are you manifesting? What are you calling in wherever you're at right now? Are you there? Are you realizing the vision that you have for your life or are you working on it? But if you're working on it are you working on it consciously? Do you know what that looks like? Do you know where you want to go? Do you know where you're headed? I mean this is all really important stuff and it's I would suggest important especially if we don't feel satisfied where we are right now and that can be in any category.

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Right this could be personal, it could be in you know in like your living arrangements, you know your career, relationships, it could be in business, it could be physically you know in your health, in your wellness, maybe your athleticism. It can be a whole bunch of things and what came up and I feel what can happen and it contributes to struggle, it contributes to stagnation, it contributes to that sense of you know being stuck or not achieving things or similar is not being clear on what the vision is and if you're running a company you know you need to have a vision especially if that company is bigger than just yourself. If you're a solopreneur and you're like doing your things oh the one thing we need as solopreneurs right is is discipline.

We need to you know be able to do the work right and that work can kind of be whatever we want it to be and the results we get or we don't are really on us because we're the ones driving that bus right and really we're the only ones on that bus other than you know customers and clients and um who choose to work with you buy your products and come with you and otherwise but it's on you right there's no one else um to to blame to pass the buck on to or anything you have to drive that bus or it doesn't go anywhere right but then that's your that's you that's like solopreneurship i would suggest is very much like um an inner uh work activity right you have to look yourself in the mirror and say i'm building this thing and and hold yourself to that it's great practice it's important right but as you take on bigger scenarios not to say you're solo um business um can't you know thrive and and scale and be abundant in all kinds of of ways but as you take on a team to execute your vision or your let me just say your business at the moment you know to execute the things you're doing in your business as you work with others um you know in partnership um as your company grows your business grows or you work with others to build other business so say that's privately and then especially publicly you enter the public arena to run a public company let's say because you've built up a great brand with your solo business in whichever you know niche or focus that you offer which has added value to others which is then um invited um you know a publicly trading company with substantial resources potentially or at minimum access to them possibly um to want to work with you which maybe that evolves to a c-suite role right or um or a ceo role right um not just in the you know in the executive but maybe you run the whole thing and now you have all these shareholders and you don't necessarily have to be public sure maybe you're a private company with a bunch of shareholders you know and a growing you know pool of shareholders but when you get public just side note on this when you get public in Canada at least it's because you hit a threshold of the number of shareholders you can have as a private company and you move into this category of being a reporting issuer and um it it it pulls you into this category of um of being publicly traded which which creates liquidity for your shareholders because not all shareholders want to necessarily sit and be stuck in in a venture for three five however many years you know until they possibly get an exit they can evaluate the business along the way and so if you're in that seat and you don't have a vision for your business then it's not going to go anywhere you know people choose to back people with financial support and and otherwise when um they have a vision of where they want uh the company to go this is equally on a personal level that you rally you you manifest you call in um what you um want uh what you need to realize your vision once you get clear on what that thing is and in my experience that comes about not necessarily in a purely linear fashion you get clear on that you start moving towards that and surprises will meet you along the way that help you get there help you towards that in ways that you're just not going to predict there are ways that we can reverse engineer things in our vision and say you know this is a plan or this is a road map or this is like a general formula or a system that other people have used to get there which can be a great starting point but it doesn't guarantee that that's the way you'll necessarily get there um you know our world i would suggest is far more organic than that um dynamic than that but the key is to be open to that and the key beyond that is to know what that thing is right so when running a company you have to have vision right we can talk about elon musk a lot right everybody you know likes to talk about elon musk many anyways not everybody's a huge fan but like you know pretty hard to deny the impact uh this man and those that he works with um have had on the world and continue to and i feel at its core um in in you know positive intending ways fair so you know here's a guy with vision and there's big value in that because there's a lot of people that don't know where they want to go that don't have vision and that are also scared or intimidated to have or hold a vision what if it doesn't work what if this doesn't happen like you know and we get stuck and i suggest like a fear trap of that it goes deeper i think on a level for many too that um many don't feel they deserve that vision you know whatever kind of lower vibrating elements that we're still carrying like uh um you know feeling you don't deserve to succeed caring to shame from a past mistake or something um or trauma from a past experience whatever it is that you know holds you away maybe holds you back from the limelight or um you know uh you know just holds you back from going for it from establishing that and having the courage to to um to take that for yourself to to hold that space for yourself but you must and you need to let that go so you need to look inside yourself and say what is the thing what are the things that might be holding me back from from establishing a vision and then once we've done a bit of this work then we can say okay what is the vision that i want to you know realize if i'm not happy in this experience in my life at this moment or in the work that i'm doing or the people i'm working with or the things that are happening and how do we recognize that because we're tired we're irritable we're chippy we're you know angry aggressive like we're in any of these kind of emotional states you could be depressed or similar feeling depressed tired this is just clues right that like you're not fully aligned and i ask yourself you know okay well i'm experiencing that i am not realizing the vision of myself that i want in my life and why am i holding myself back from that and these things will come up and just do a bit of that of that reflection meditate on this a bit right sit with it and explore and just be honest with yourself that's the beautiful thing about meditation is that it's just you with yourself you know the things we might not tell other people we're going to be more honest with with ourselves when we're just looking inward and allowing ourselves to to to speak and when you you know with ourselves like internally and so when you let that come up you can probably put a finger on at least some more obvious ones and in identifying that you can release that you know you can breathe into that and feel into that and release those blockages that you're putting there if you are because if you aren't putting blockages there then why aren't you realizing the vision now we can talk about a bunch of different ways and and what have you but i'm telling you i'm suggesting to you that you can create that vision if you know where you're going you know where you want to go and that's sincerely what you want you know you will you will move energy to get there and things will manifest and you'll look at the work you're doing and going well that's my vision but i'm doing this thing this thing that i'm doing how does that serve my vision and you'll look at it you'll scratch your head and you go it doesn't so why am i doing this you know and you can do that through all these different categories of your life and you can go like what the hell am i doing you know and then you start making these adjustments so you're releasing some of the blockages you're exploring them right to go okay like what is this why am i holding myself back okay all right what is my vision okay creating a vision we all have visions we all have dreams right you know we lose sight of our dreams at times we get distracted by all kinds of different things that can can put pressure on us in our journey to challenge us in our journey but the dreams still exist you know we remember we know the places where we go that feel the best that feel the greatest the people were with the places we're at the activities these things we need to grab those right we need to put those in our pocket we also need to hold them in front of us as a part of that vision to go this is where i feel my best and this is where i want to be more right and um in doing this in doing so it starts to move away from the things that aren't serving that maybe we've gotten pulled into or distracted from or by for whatever different reasons right there's fears there's all kinds of stuff but you gotta have a vision we have to find the vision so if you're listening to this and you're like i don't know what my vision is i haven't thought about this for a while well this is your call this is your challenge to sit there and consider it and go through all these different categories go through you know your health go through your relationships your career business if you have one um you know family relationships uh you know um you know travel visions uh home life you know social activities community financial circumstances like go through each of these categories and go here's where i'm at here's where i want to be here's where i'm at here's where i want to be and keep doing this through all the categories until you have a vision right because if you're listening to this and you don't have a vision right now then where you are is likely where i would suggest you would generally stay because you're not calling yourself to anything different right so you know my colleague it kind of hit bottom here and and you know i felt at bottom and was making some choices that were sending him i would suggest in in the not best direction for him and farther away from the visions he surely once held right that he's probably been distracted from from holding at the moment and i said hey you gotta you gotta find this you have to stop doing the destructive things because this is what you're doing and those are not going to solve anything they're only going to exacerbate the problems so what's coming up for you you've been going through some stuff like what what is it we talked about it and he moved this energy and i'm really proud of him for doing that because he was really open about it and he really quickly said you know and when i said how's it going he's like not great that's courageous to say that that is super courageous to say that i'm super proud of him for saying that i said good oh it's okay it's okay if it's not great what is great is that you're saying that out loud and you're recognizing that so what are we going to do about that right let's start so what isn't working here okay you're you're drinking like and starting to drink quite a bit right so that's not going to serve here so what are we going to do about that we're going to put that bottle down we're going to get clear here have you been outside in the last few days no okay we're going to get outside get some fresh air you know it's a hot day take the hose spray yourself with the hose you know get the dog go for a walk like just put the phone down like let's just move the body a bit let's open up let's get present let's just stabilize a little did you know what i mean and then what's the vision where are we going from here you know as i said to him today is the first day of the rest of your life so what does that look like you literally have opportunities all day everywhere okay they all come in different shapes and sizes we all have different kind of skills experiences abilities but we are generally surrounded and connected by people of all different shapes and sizes and experiences and abilities in our lives um you know you haven't been necessarily living in a vacuum i would suggest as you listen to this so you have all these things you know so are we acknowledging you know all the potential around us and the opportunity around us for things to change for things to shift and so having a vision this is in life or in your business is really really important and it comes from being creative it comes from just channeling ideas and believing they're possible right and just framing your mind like that i don't know how this is going to happen but i'm going to start because that's the thing i want that's the thing that i enjoy the most right this is where i want my kids to grow up this is the career i'd like to have because i really enjoy this thing just open up to it the first big step is to just bring it in and allow yourself the opportunity of it allow yourself the permission to receive it and to realize it when we do that like i said of you know exploring acknowledging our own blockages things that we can control and releasing those things and fully embracing that potential and then we start doing this work and moving forward with it so in this um you know segment here in this episode i challenge you to visit your vision board and if you don't have one then today is the day and vision boards can be super fun and now some time ago you know not too long ago i think some people still do it this way to be honest is you know people grab all the magazines right and they cut out all the pictures of the magazines and they put them on like a you know uh a uh like a board right like a a cork board or something right and they pin all the different images and stuff and you can do that an easier way um in a way i use is pinterest those who are kind of closest to me know that i've had a lot of things to say about pinterest over the years in the positive because i really like the platform but you can set up a private board on pinterest set up your account you know normal kind of social sign up and stuff if you've had pinterest um before it's cool like a lot of people still don't fully understand how really to use pinterest because it doesn't really operate like a typical social network you know really like it's not quite as intuitive um but you can create a board and you can make that board private and you can add sections within that to kind of organize your board but that's not necessary but first you can just um search through pinterest you can pull in from other sources but you know just trying to keep this reasonably simple also and you can search for through all the topics on pinterest and i'd suggest to you you save the images and inspirations that that resonate with you about the type of life you would like to have an experience and you'll be amazed you know have a session sit down and just be chill and go through this and you can also do it on your phone and kind of keep adding um to it as you go you don't have to do it all in one one sitting you know but you're starting to create this vision and once you have like a certain threshold like of of pins like once let's say you get up to like 50 pins on there right um you move forward 80 pins or 100 and some odd pins once you just start getting going and like enjoying pulling in all this inspo you're gonna look through it and you're gonna see this vision of your life start to just jump out at you right and now you're starting to shape a vision board of the things you want then when you look at those things well you can kind of start to reverse engineer or give some more thought to how you're going to get to these places but at minimum now you know where you're going now you have inspiration in front of you to say this is the vision i have for my life this is what i want and this is where i'm headed you know and then we get started and you can audit your current life alongside that vision and you go which of the things in my life currently you know am i enjoying it's good to note but also am i not enjoying right which of the current things in my life are not serving that vision of how i'd like my life to be and if things aren't then you know the practice of self-love and that respect the practice of of growth right um the journey of of evolving in our respective lives is to take ownership of that and responsibility for it generally and make the appropriate adjustments you know can be one at a time or however it depends on what we're talking about and they might not all happen instantaneously but the intentions can be set consciously to say i need to make these changes and making those changes i will serve this vision to be realized and i'm on path right because that is your call that's that's your you know your vision that's what you want to experience in life that's how you want your world to be at work and you know what when you get there if you don't feel it's perfect you don't feel it's right i mean of course perfection is elusive but you know what i mean if it's a bit different than you anticipated when you arrive at those destinations guess what you can sit down and you kind of revision board and you can tune them a little and i'd suggest that when we start doing this work we're talking like broad strokes we use a big paintbrush right because you know maybe there's a bunch of things and many maybe maybe many categories are like kind of not where they're supposed to be right but as you get closer to it i feel you'll find that the brush you use to make these adjustments will start to become smaller the knobs you'll turn to tweak the dial as i say you know will be smaller and we're we're tweaking we're tuning as opposed to to completely change it and i feel that as you get closer to that and as you start to realize these elements that that will will occur and uh you keep doing that until you feel where you want to be you know part of the journey for me was once a thing of like i feel this way 80 percent of the time i feel like tired or hungover or whatever 80 percent of the time and i feel like really great let's just say uh 20 of the time right and then the work was for me and my journey was to shift that so like okay well let's shift that the other way where i feel at least you know great 80 of the time and then maybe there's you know 20 where i'm a little bit you know tired or whatever whatever comes up right but as an objective like let's make that shift and that shift needs to be conscious and it helps holding a vision and this is personal i'm talking a lot about personal but this is in business too you know leaders lead leaders find those roles right at the top of organizations because they have a vision you know they have a thesis of where they feel the company can go what it can become what it can do and how that will benefit you know all stakeholders which is a term you know that includes like employees customers clients community you know shareholders right all this did i say shareholders i'm not sure but shareholders right collectively stakeholders and those executives then share that vision they go hey you know i'm in the seat here's what i feel right here's what i see i think we can get to here i think we can do this thing and i think if we pull that off this could be the result and this could be how this benefits everybody right and so professionally your ability to have a vision right to to create a vision to channel a vision receive it you know organize it um propose it and um and then advance it then to execute to realize that vision is what that role is all about right along the way um you know encouraging inspiring supporting championing the people that are working with you on that vision to realize it right and those who believe in it um you know will ride with you to have a good go at that right and you know not everybody always does with every vision but hey here's my vision what are your thoughts i love it great you're in i hate it i don't think it's gonna work no problem jim hey no hard feelings all good there's the door you're welcome to walk through it and go do whatever feels right for you and wish you the best you know so whenever new executives come in these types of visions shift and teams kind of you know work out shake out like that and similar um and then realign and then go and then you find out and if it works fantastic if it doesn't work you know as intended right maybe a fraction of it does or part of it does or you know maybe it takes longer than anticipated or you require more resources that aren't like immediately available there's all kinds of things that may occur on the journey right well things shift you refine your vision you know you test things and the um the the data comes back it's like hey we thought it would work like this but it's actually working like this it's like okay well but it's working so let's just adjust our vision a bit that's okay you know what i mean and if it doesn't work and you've done your best and you you know been honest in your activities and your approach and this is professionally i'm talking about it's okay you know and you can try something else you can try again but you'll have your integrity you know you'll have your representation as an broker in the business that you do and you'll be able to continue on in your journey right professionally um you know in contrast if you don't operate that way and you you paint a vision that feels totally unrealistic and you kind of sell a bill of goods to a bunch of people and you know it doesn't work out and you weren't honest about it you stole a you know the uh you know the uh the darker fruits of those types of choices which i certainly do not in any way shape or form recommend right so be noble and of pure intent and and uh and you know clear ambition in positive ways to make positive impacts the world in your vision i'd suggest and in your life let that joy in your world right end um everything is possible you know my vision boards are huge they've got a lot i can possibly simplify them but like i cover a lot of categories because i ask myself the questions where am i and where am i going and the path isn't necessarily linear but i am uh generally speaking uh very much on path more aligned with my path all the time as i kind of review and make adjustments and you know tweak the way i do things to be more kind of efficient and supportive of these intentions and um i firmly believe all these visions for me will will be realized some have in the past and um more will in the future and i'm flowing towards it you know so that's what i'm going to do and that's what i challenge you and encourage you to do if you're listening to this today is the day the first day of the rest of your life what is your vision for the future and if you hold a vision for that good for you i'd send you good vibes and um uh you know i champion i i support i applaud your your clarity on your path and um assuming it is a you know positive direction for you and those around you you know i wish you all of that to be realized and if you're listening to this and you don't have a vision at the moment and you're not sure where you want to go then i'm saying it again you're you're okay you deserve it let it in let your resistance go to it trust the path of your life and your journey uh trust that the universe is guiding you towards your highest and greatest good but also recognize that it is very difficult for the universe to bring you the things that you want need if you are not making those kind of obvious if you're not clear what those things are um so this is the work of cultivating vision of uh of um realizing vision you know of growing into our visions all of this stuff both personally and professionally so let me know what you feel about all of this um i love this topic and it's it's a big thing because i channel ideas like all the time i'm just always cultivating inspiration from things and taking notes and and you know saving images and bookmarking videos and like i'm just like oh i like that i like this oh that's a great you know design or that's great decor like that's a cool location you know what i mean so i'm always just pulling this in and i invite you to as well and uh i want to hear how it goes i want to hear what it's all about um i want to see your boards if you're willing to share um all my links are below depending on whatever platform you're on they should certainly be there for you to reach out to me and uh let's get after it right let me know and uh until then until we more about this and my next episode hope you're having an amazing day i'm sending you good vibes and we'll chat with you later