Cultivate Your Vision

I want to continue a little bit on the theme from a previous post, “How’s Your Vision?” I want to talk to you about some very practical ways that you can cultivate your vision.

If you could wave the magic wand and create the perfect life or business, what would you create? If you don’t have a vision for yourself or for your business, then you’re just floundering around. You’re literally building your house, your life, your business on the shifting sands of whatever feels good in the moment or whatever is trendy at the time. And that’s why they are called trends; they come and they go.

But when you have a vision, when you know what it is that you want for your life or for your business, then it’s much easier to deal with the difficult times in our lives. Your endurance is directly proportional to the clarity of your vision.

It’s one thing to have a vision, but to cultivate it is an altogether different thing. To “cultivate” your vision is to prepare it for use, to allow it to grow and to become more clear. By cultivating your vision it will become more detailed and yield fruit in your life.

So there are some very practical things to do to cultivate your vision. I grow my vision by doing some things every single day.

One of the things I’m going to encourage you to do is to be still and to just be quiet for a little while because our minds tend to be so busy all of the time. What I have found is that meditation, or literally just being quiet,
has yielded much more fruit in my life and has allowed my vision for who I want to be to grow. Meditation has allowed that vision to come into much more clarity and much more focus.

My friend, Leticia Rae, of “Finding the Silver Lining” said, “Meditation is more about controlling your thoughts rather than letting your thoughts control you.” So I meditate every single morning. It’s a part of my morning routine and has been for almost a year now. It started with just 5 minutes. Then, once I got used to it, I expanded it to 10 minutes. Now I do 30 minutes of meditation first thing in the morning and I do another 30 minutes meditation almost every day in the afternoon.

Meditation is simply being quiet and allowing whatever thoughts that need to come up and emerge. I love what Leticia says about meditation: “Quiet the mind and the soul will speak.” There are things in your heart and in your soul that God and the Universe are trying to say to you. These are the directions that you’re supposed to move in and feelings that you’re supposed to really tap into. Sometimes this can be difficult because your mind is so busy and
there’s so much noise all around you that you’re simply reacting to the day-to-day events rather than very calmly responding to the day’s events. It’s essential to respond in a way that’s in keeping with your long-term vision for your life. So meditation is something that I am going to always recommend that everybody incorporate into their lives. Even if it is just for 30 seconds!

Another practical thing you can do is ask yourself this question: If you knew the answer was going to be “yes” for anything that you wanted for your life, what would you ask for?

I’ve worked with enough people to know that this is something you’ll need to practice. When you are answering this question, you’re going to have to start off small, because your first inclination is to think something really, really big and extravagant, but then your limiting beliefs come up. You may think you’re being greedy or think that because there are people in the world who don’t have that, you’re not supposed to have it either. All of this kind of limiting thinking is false! It is all a lie! That kind of thinking is literally somebody else’s belief that has been placed upon you!

So start where you are and start with what you can. Practice asking yourself this question to grow your dreaming muscles!

Now here’s a little exercise that I want you to do. I want you to sit still for just a minute. Take 3 deep breaths and still your mind. I’m going to suggest something to you and an image, a thought, or a feeling, is going to come into your conscious awareness. I just want you to flow with it.

What I’d like you to do is to invite a special gift into your life. It can be anything that comes into your awareness right now. Invite it to be a part of your life. Bring it into your body. Use your imagination to create the chemistry of having what you want. Can you feel it? Can you use your imagination to create the chemistry of having or doing or being what you want?

Whatever it is you just invited into your life is possible for you to have! If somebody else has it, or is doing it or being it, that is proof, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that it is possible for you too! If you thought about it and you can feel yourself actually having, being or experiencing that thing or that person or that job or that business… Whatever it is, it means it is possible.

I want you to exercise that muscle. I want you to write those things down. Make a list of the things that make you happy. Make a list of the things that when you’re doing them, you feel more alive than at any point in your life.

When was the last time you felt really, really, really happy? What were you doing? Who were you with? What were you thinking? What were you saying? What was going on? Write these things down. Focus on them. Dwell on them. This is how you cultivate it.

One of the other things I want you to learn how to do is to let go of the need to know “how” to make your vision real. Don’t get caught in “the dreaded hows.” Our job is to dream, to have the vision for what is possible, to dream about this thing that we can experience and to actually feel it. Invite it into our body. Use your imagination to create the chemistry of having it. Then do 1 little thing that brings you closer to your vision. It could simply be this exercise. Writing it down on a piece of paper is another step.

Talk to a really good friend who you feel safe to talk to about your dreams. Get with somebody who has no motive or desire of any kind to do anything other than see you become the fullest expression of who you were created to be and to encourage you and to support you in your goals and ambitions. Not somebody who is going to say, “No, that’s silly. You can’t have that. You need to stop dreaming and join the real world.” Well, guess what? Dreaming IS the real world! It is a real practice. So don’t get caught in “the dreaded hows” because that is the graveyard of our dreams!

Our job to dream. Our job is to do what we can do today with what we have and where we are right now and not
to get caught up in “the dreaded hows.” The “hows” show up in all kinds of crazy, miraculous ways. If, in your mind, you can see yourself doing it, having it and being it, then invite that into your body, and if you feel the tingle of it–there’s your vision!

Exercise this. Cultivate it. Get more and more clear about what it is you want to do.

Have a vision, cultivate it, grow it, get it crystal clear and step in that direction. BELIEVE that it can be made real. That it can be manifested and that it’s for you!

I talk about this in more detail on this episode of my Life Is A Marathon podcast.