How do you vision and create business and personal growth? It is easier than you might think. We all have the power within us to take our life and business to the fullest potential, which means we are able to achieve personal and professional milestones. Your success, however, is dependant upon following a vision with steps and a plan. Think about smart entrepreneurs who have put together exciting products; they could not do this without a vision. Roller blades inspired wheels on suitcases; Roll-on deodorant from the ballpoint pen. So firstly, ask yourself the following questions about your pattern in putting together personal and professional growth plans:
- What happens to me after a few weeks?
- Why do I keep falling back into bad habits, when challenges arise?
- Why do I go back into familiar ways of avoiding solving these challenges?
Solution
This does happen to many of us. One of the most important ways to begin changing your life and growing your business is to start to think like an Olympic athlete. The athletes going to the London 2012 Olympics will have put together over the past few years, a vision, plan, goals (with their coach) and a purpose to win or achieve their personal best.
Learn from Olympic athletes and great performing artists. Success is inspiring, uplifting and transforms life.
How do you translate an Olympic mindset into your life?
- Ask yourself what you want to achieve this year and beyond.
- Vision, see, feel and embody your success.
- Then, put a master plan together to keep you accountable during 2012 and beyond.
As you follow the steps below to help develop a vision and action plan together, be aware that you need a supportive mindset. Your positive mind combined with an achievable vision is possible. I have spent most of my life in the high-end performing arts world as a professional flautist, arts manager and working with Olympic athletes. I have seen lives change when individuals are able to follow a vision, overcome obstacles and commit to creating performances of the highest level. You can translate this blueprint in all aspects of your life, be it:
- A more fulfilling career
- Overseas travel
- A new home
- Financial stability
- Improved health
- Greater happiness
- Deeper relationships with important people in your life
Plan
All you need to have a clear vision is a blueprint, goals, a positive mindset, passion and commitment. Start the visioning program with a friend so that you can both keep yourself accountable. Be challenging, and do not let each other stop when you come up against familiar non-constructive behaviour.
Here is the introduction to my visioning program, with basic tools to begin.
What you need to begin is a piece of music you love, pen and paper, magazines, glue and poster size paper. This whole process should take no longer than 30 minutes. It is important to work quickly. If you stop and slow the process down, a conscious part of your brain may come in, which could be the part of you which has stopped you from reaching your potential in previous years.
Visioning.
Make sure you are in a room or space on your own. Put on a favourite piece of music. And while the music is playing for 5-7 minutes maximum (any longer and you will start moving out of the visioning space and into your conscious mind), start to imagine what you want to create, develop and achieve during the next year to make 2012 and beyond the best years of your life. Be daring think out of the square. Olympic athletes vision big, so make the vision enormous.
Writing.
When the music has finished and you have a vision or images of what you would like to achieve (even if they do not make sense to you at this stage), write a paragraph that describe the visioning experience.
Collage.
Transcribe this vision and writing into a visual representation through images. Tear; do not cut (tearing helps you to connect with your inner picture and keep the vision alive) images, pictures and words from magazines that represent the visioning experience. Fill a poster size paper with the images.
Connect.
Look over the collage that you have put together and see how it connects with the visioning, even the images that are different to your vision. Once you have a visual representation of your vision your brain is able to connect more deeply to the plan. You now have a story or picture of the year in front of you.
Explore.
With this collage, you need to explore the most important sections and to now put steps and an action plan together. Divide the collage into areas. For example, you may have images of holiday destinations, homes, cars, children, lovers, food, travel, entertainment and so on. Put each group from your collage under separate headings. So if one of the sections of your collage is connected to travel, you now need to make this a goal with a blueprint or a plan regarding how this holiday is going to happen.
Make the vision happen.
Work backwards, from the date of the trip. For example, if you want to travel to Europe:
- Where do you want to go?
- When do you want to travel?
- If the trip is in August 2013, what do you have to do from now til August to make this trip happen?
- Break down the actions to make this trip happen into months, or weeks. Some questions might include how much money you need to save and what research you need to do regarding accommodation.
- Which countries do you want to visit?
- For how long?
- What regions do you want to visit in each country? Be specific! You are putting a blueprint together and bringing the picture to life.
- How are you going to finance the trip?
- How will you feel taking this trip?
- Make yourself a separate travel vision board so that you bring alive the experience. By doing this, you feel the excitement and are more successful in achieving this holiday.
This is an introduction to the power of visioning, with a smart plan, goals and mindset to help you create personal and business growth. All you have to do now is to apply this plan to all of the areas that are in your vision board. With the blueprint, every day feel, create and take action to make your vision happen. Your mindset becomes stronger when there is a vision, a purpose and a plan for the immediate future.
