Hey, bold leaders. It is my absolute favorite week of the year, the week between Christmas and New Year’s where you have no idea what day it is or what planet you’re on. Right this very minute, as you’re listening to this, I’m curled up on my favorite chair with the softest coziest blanket and a London Fog, doing the most important work I do all year. I’m reflecting on 2020, all 1,011 days of 2020. This is important work as you prepare for any plans you put into place for 2021. Each year at this time, we roll out our five day journaling for vision, clarity, and abundance training, where you get to take stock of the key areas in your life. Each day this week, I’m going to walk you through each of the days in this training. The components in this assessment are more life oriented and the reason we do this is to ensure that we build a business around your life, and not the other way around.
Too often, I see business owners overworking and sacrificing what truly brings them fulfillment and joy. Setting some life goals like upgrades to your home, or vacations with friends go a long way in determining why you want to profit in your business this year. It gives you a purpose for your profit. The leaders who have gone through this training have received amazing results that they would have paid good money for, and we are giving it to you for free. One person even told me that this training was worth a million dollars. Katie, who has done this training, said “A huge thank you to Tara. This is the first five day challenge I have ever completed, and you’ve changed my mindset on journaling. It’s been invaluable to kickstart me back into connecting with my next chapter. I’m loving how I’ll be showing up in the world.”
Maybe you’re feeling like you’re faced with a million different decisions, or choices, or possibilities, and the decision fatigue is real. Second guessing yourself can really keep you frozen. Maybe you feel like you have so many goals with so little time to focus. This is how Patrick felt until he did our five day challenge.
“I can’t thank Tara enough for setting me straight on what I should be focused on and more importantly, why I should be focused on it. Do yourself a solid and get over to her training and learn how to get focused, gain perspective on what it is you really want for your personal and business blueprint. I’ve already moved forward more than I have in a very long time.” Thank you, Patrick. Thank you. I appreciate that. And I’m so happy that you and Katie have had the results that you’ve had through this five day challenge. So many reluctant journalers have let me know this has helped them get the habits started. So grab a cup of coffee or your London Fog, and join me each day this week to journal for clarity, abundance, and vision.
Want the workbook that goes along with this audio? Come on over to theboldleadershiprevolution.com/journaling.
Welcome back to day four of the Journaling for Vision, Clarity and Abundance training. Thanks for hanging with me for the last few days. When I created this training, there was a part of me that question whether or not you would stay with me for the five whole days, but it was important to me to be able to be in your ear coaching and encouraging you to take the action every step of the way. We are so impatient these days, which is why so many struggle to gain clarity and hold a vision for themselves and their businesses.
Clarity, vision, abundance are all things that require a long-term commitment. That doesn’t mean it takes a long time, but once you achieve that vision, you have to set the next one and the next one. So the goalpost is always moving. And it’s part of the fun, it’s part of what makes this thing called leadership fun. It also requires persistence and tenacity and a commitment to continual growth and improvement. Today is all about creating that gorgeous vision for the most important focus area.
So again, like in previous days, pull out your journal, get your favorite pens. This is about creating that habit of getting into your journal for 20 minutes a day. This is where you are going to describe, today is where you’re going to describe what success looks like in whatever area you decided to focus on. Whether it’s career, physical environment, personal growth, money, family, friends, et cetera. This is where we’re going to start to really take a look at what it looks like when it’s done. While we said this was a focus area for 90 days, I really want you to create a larger vision for this focus area. What does success look like in a year? I want you to look at what is successful like in a year. And then you can look at what success looks like over the next 90 days and really create that first glimpse of a milestone.
If we were working together in person, I would ask you to create a vision for three years out and then walk it back. However, for the sake of time, let’s focus on a one-year timeframe and then 90-day timeframe. You can jot down some words that you find, inspiring phrases, quotes, anything you need to help you get started. This isn’t about getting it right or perfect, and this isn’t about creating something that is whole and complete right now. This is something that is a breathing, living document. This is something that you’ll add to and subtract from and change along the way. I don’t want you gripping your vision so tightly that you strangle it or suffocate it. This is a creative exercise. Journaling is a creative exercise, building a business or a career, setting wild goals and earning money beyond your dreams. It’s all a creative exercise, so creating a vision in itself isn’t hard, but other challenges come up along the way that’ll give it some challenge.
One, you might not ever have sat down to really think about where you’re going to be in a year from now in this specific area. You might not have done it before, you might not have taken the time to really think about this. And if you have, maybe you’ve resisted it or bumped up against some of the challenges that are worth noting that I’m going to share with you. So these are just some common things that I see come up when I work with people in creating their vision. These are things that have come up for me when creating my vision. I’ve had a number of tough spots when it’s come to my vision. So for 10 years I held a vision of leaving my corporate job and starting my own business. And in August, 2015 I gave my notice and left my 20-year corporate career and started my own business.
And for a long time after that, I felt really lost. Like this was the vision that I held for so long and I’ve achieved it. Now what? Now what’s next? Right. That question of, I’ve reached this level of success, now what? And it took me a really long time to really step back into a clear vision. I had a lot of resistance around sitting down with my journal, and walking through this. I was in a great place. I wasn’t in a place that felt necessarily stuck, but I also wasn’t really sure what I was moving toward and so I had to really just be patient and kind with myself, and take some steps. A big challenge that I see come up for people is that they overthink it, right? You can’t overthink this. You have to simply create it and use your journal as a blank canvas, and just because you write those words to your vision today doesn’t mean you can’t change them tomorrow.
We’re not etching this in stone, so there really is no reason to overthink it. The second thing that I notice people do, and I’ve certainly done myself, is you’re going to judge yourself. Is this the right vision? Who do I think I am to have this vision? Am I really good enough to step into this? So please do your best in this time to suspend self-judgment. There is no right or wrong vision. It can be changed and refined at any time. As a matter of fact, I completely expect it to morph into something even bigger, better, and more impactful. That’s certainly how it has happened for me. And it’s safe to want bigger and better for your life and business. It’s safe to have desires and to crave and to yearn for things. It is safe.
The third thing that really trips people up is their logical brain. So you have to turn your logical brain off for this, the part of your brain that keeps whispering, Yeah, but how? It’s really a sign of resistance. You don’t need to know how, your only job is to create. And this is painful for a lot of over-achieving type A doers. And I know because I was one, so if you can find a shred of trust in your skeptical brain, now is the time to trust that you don’t need to know how. You simply need to pick up the paintbrush and paint the picture.
The fourth area that trips people up is you’re going to want to avoid this exercise. That’s just the way it is. So please know that if you don’t commit to this exercise of creating a vision, your success in life is going to be limited. Your vision, in my opinion is everything. And it is okay that you don’t know what it is right now. And it is okay that it seems a little far-off or farfetched or murky. What’s important is that you stick with it, that you commit to digging into this on a regular basis.
You’re going to want to hear the fifth thing. You’re going to want to skip ahead and just set goals. That’s just what a high-achieving type A doers want. They just want to do the doing, right? They don’t want to do the visualizing. Visualizing doesn’t feel like doing. Visualizing feels like dreaming, which it is, but we need to do the both. We need to do the dreaming and the doing. And so you’re going to want to skip ahead and set goals. And know this, there is no point in having goals if you don’t have a vision. And I know that there are some experts who disagree with me, so if you want to avoid this work, and you want to avoid creating the vision, feel free to find the expert who will allow you to do that. But I am not that person. I actually believe you don’t need to set goals when you know how to use vision as a tool for performance and success.
You can have a vision and not need to set goals. Once you have a clear vision and you layer some goals and vision is like vision is like the fire that burns. And throwing, layering in some goals is like putting some accelerant on the fire. It makes it go faster. It gives you something to drive for. It gives you something to measure against and it helps. However, you don’t need to have them if you have a clear vision. So those of you who get triggered by goals, or fail to set them, or set them and then miss them, or set them and then don’t like you stranglehold them. I’m the expert for you because I’ll let you have your vision and I’ll let you focus on that vision every day without setting a tremendous amount of goals.
I believe in both and I believe in that you can have your vision and you can still get to where you’re going. I’ve done it. There have been times in my life where it wasn’t the right season for hardcore goal setting and I just kept that vision and I still achieved what it was that I wanted to achieve. The most important thing about creating a vision is to have fun with it. Challenge yourself to think differently than ever before. Allow yourself to get excited by the possibility.
So hit me up, hit reply and share your vision with me. I want to read this beautiful creation that you are spending some time working on, so definitely hit reply and share it with me.
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