If you are anything like I was, some 8 years ago you would have frozen on the spot when someone asked you if you had a vision.
A vision?
Yes I do. To get through the end of the week without any hassles.
I really struggled with this concept of looking in to the future.
Don’t get me wrong I’ve always been a dreamer. I’ve always dreamed about making my first million. I’ve always dreamed about being a successful entrepreneur.
But a clear vision of my future was literally “Vision Impossible” for me.
However as a voracious reader of biographies on successful people, it became obvious that it wasn’t a coincidence that the one thing they seemed to have in common was a clear vision. They didn’t always have a clear plan but somehow they were able to articulate where they wanted to get to, and this was a primary motivator for them.
So I resolved to work on this area and see if it really delivered results.
I literally started from scratch and starting writing with as much clarity as I could about what I wanted to achieve over the next 10 years.
I didn’t find it easy at first. I could capture thoughts, ideas but found it difficult to flesh it out.
As in all things help is always at hand. I started to read extensively in the area of vision creation. Not just business books but also in personal development books and audios.
The very brilliant Zig Ziglar’s words were literally burning my ears. “You can’t hit a target, you can’t see”.
The clear feedback was that I needed to create my own “movie” of the perfect future in the four key areas for me. Those being family, finances, health and business.
This in itself become a gradual process. By that I mean that I found this hard initially to focus on an image. To create a virtual movie in my mind seemed impossible.
However I resolved to do this daily. I resolved to create a vision book with various pictures/images that enabled me to recreate powerful images in my mind.
Over the course of a couple of months I started to get some breakthroughs. I began to visual with ease. I began to write with great clarity what I wanted to achieve, and by when I wanted to achieve it.
I began also to see results.
The sheer process of that focus was uncovering for me new opportunities that I had never seen before. Probably because I was not focused on seeing them.
If you have read my previous articles you will have gathered how passionately I believe in the power of your own thinking. And how it determines your results.
My vision was to build a business from nothing in to €20m in 5 years. It seemed bloody ridiculous at first to be honest. But I focused daily on this. And it helped me enormously.
Business is most definitely a process of success and failure. Every time I had a failure and there were many, I refocused my mind to thinking back to my vision.
And every opportunity I got to talk about my vision to my team, I took it.
Every little detail I could add to it, to give it more power and resonance, I added.
It become quite a powerful tool for me and a really strong personal motivator.
It forced me to think much bigger than I had ever previously done. It also in a sense empowered me to take risks I hadn’t previously taken. I just had a driving force that seemed to push inexorably towards the completion of the vision.
You too can achieve this. You must in my opinion achieve this clarity. You must utilise a really powerful tool to help you move forward and hit your targets.
And just to let you know, we hit our vision of just under €20m in just under 5 years, so I can attest that it works. !! You have to believe this.
Actions;
Just start to work on creating a really powerful and empowering vision.
Avoid the temptation of many to spend an hour on this and then have it framed.
This will take time. And commitment.
Create a vision board. Create a vision statement. Create a mental movie of what your business, your financial, family and health would look like if you achieved your ideal.
Really work to give this a life of it’s own. Don’t forget we used to be brilliant dreamers. We just had it hammered out of us over the years.
Well hammer it back in. Literally create a habit of focusing on the vision you have crystallised. Do it daily. And you will see the results.
