I’ve talked to several people in the past few days who feel like they’re trying to do so many things…and failing at all of them.
I’m not sure if you’ve ever felt that way, but I certainly have, and it’s the worst! Several years ago I was working in the specialty foods industry and pitched the idea of taking two months to travel around the West Coast and discover new products we could add to our offerings. I got the green light from my boss at the time and took off, but just a few days in I was feeling terrible. I was working super hard every day, but I kept feeling like it wasn’t enough.
Not long after, I decided that I was simply unwilling to continue feeling like a failure.
I realized that if I continued pinning my definition of success to completing every single thing I wanted to in a given day, I would never feel successful a day in my life!
So I took the concept of Visioning–something I had always associated with the long-term, and applied it to the short-term. I started writing daily Visions, and that helped me shift from feeling like a daily failure to feeling like a daily success.
My very first daily Vision was “I’m getting into bed and I feel a little bit better than I did when I woke up.” One single sentence that had nothing to do with a to-do list and everything to do with evidence. Evidence that I had gotten to where I wanted to go by the end of the day.
And y’now what? It worked!
I got into bed that night, and it was true! I did feel a little better than I did when I woke up that morning. A one-sentence daily Vision may not sound like much, but for me, it was huge! I had made my Vision a reality, and for the first time on that trip I fell asleep feeling like a success.
That feeling carried over to the next morning, and I ran with it. I kept writing daily Visions, and as I kept achieving them I started building more momentum – feeling less discouraged and more empowered.
Since then, daily Visioning has been a powerful tool in my tool kit, and I want you to have it, too!
Four Characteristics of an Effective Daily Vision
#1 It’s written in the Present Tense
Writing your Vision like it has already happened helps you make decisions throughout the day that get you closer to making it a reality rather than farther away.
#2 It’s All About the Evidence
Focusing on the evidence you’ve gotten to where you wanted to go by the end of the day helps connect you not just with the results you want to achieve but the feeling, mindset or perspective you want to cultivate.
#3 It’s All About You
Oftentimes we pin our definition of success to someone or something else, but Visioning reminds us that while we can’t control situations or people, we can define success in terms of the only thing we can control – ourselves.
#4 It’s Not a Fantasy
It’s important that our daily Vision is at the intersection of inspiring and attainable so we truly believe we can make it happen, even if we don’t exactly know how.
Let’s take another look my first Daily Vision, and see how these four characteristics apply:
“I’m getting into bed and I feel a little better than when I woke up.”
It’s written in the present tense: Even though I wrote down this daily Vision in the morning, I made it sound like it was my reality already.
It’s all about the evidence: This daily Vision speaks to a feeling, not a laundry-list of to-do’s.
It’s all about me: When I wrote this Vision, I had no idea what the day ahead of me would hold, but that didn’t matter because it was about me rather than someone or something else.
It’s Not a Fantasy: I wasn’t in a great place, so writing a Vision for a day filled with rainbows and butterflies would have felt like a silly dream. Instead I focused on incremental progress and giving myself credit for that.
I hope this concept of a daily Vision sparks some new ideas for you, and next week I’ll be sending some more specific examples of daily Visions and how to get the most out of yours.