Leadership Building Skills for Business Owners and Executives: Skill Two

Skill number two: Clarify Your Vision of the Future

 Now that we have gotten rid of the attachments to the things that limited us in skill one, we are now a blank slate.  It is a very powerful place to be but it does not last as our minds are always trying to make meaning out of our situation.   So lead your mind by creating habits of a vision of what is your intended future.

To create this vision, I invite you to write down the things you find to be most inspirational about the life you want to have.  A good question to ask yourself here is, “If you had 500 million dollars and when you have become tired with all the traveling and extravagant vacations, what would you do? What would you create? Who would you engage with? What dream can you do that would give you the most satisfaction and validation?” Remember, this is a free association exercise. The more creative you can be in this process the more that you can utilize your emotions to empower your choice of what is most satisfying to you.  Use any medium of art that helps you visualize your goal, the more creative and visual, the better.  DO NOT STRATEGIZE OR PLAN LOGISTICS OF HOW THIS IS GOING HAPPEN OR WHY IT CANNOT. Why? It is simple. 

You know what you know. You know what you do not know but you do not know what you do not know.  In other words, the answers of how you are going to do it are not available to you yet. They are not in the experiences you have had and they certainly are not in the situations that you have deemed as failures. So when you start looking for opportunity, it will come from places you have not considered before in the old way of thinking or places you have never even known about.  As long as you believe in the new goals you have established for yourself.

To get there, you must have you start with a goal that satisfies you at a very deep level.  Don’t worry if it is not completely clear right now. Your clarity in your goals will grow over time, perhaps even change. It is all part of the process.

Gather those ideas and start to formulate a scene in your future. Do so with the most powerful feelings of fulfillment and satisfaction you can imagine. The more clearly you can see this, the more you will personify the possibility.  (This is important for influencing others and keeping you focused to find opportunities.)

Know that you have this vivid dream of satisfaction and completion in your head, write it down with passion.  Write out the details as if you were telling someone about what you just experienced as if it happened today.  Repeat this daily. You may want to record yourself reading this allowed. Speak with the passion that captures your satisfaction of this experience.   This is your mantra.

This is a continuing evolution and can be repeated and redone. It does not have to be perfect. It is an ongoing process to get you to start to be the initiator of your life rather than trying to fit in like a flexible puzzle piece into what you think is possible.  Listen to this recording in the morning and at night.  Again repeat daily with the clarity of emotion and visualization that you have generated in making it. 

As you become more associated with this goal, you will begin to personify it. When you explain it to others, they will hear your passion and conviction. People are inspired by passion and they trust conviction.  This is what you want to be in your goal.   Remember, it is not out there or will happen someday.  It starts with you…NOW.

Remember true leadership is focusing on Be-Do-Have not Have-Do-Be

This way you do not have to have 500 million dollars before you live the life that is most satisfying to you.  You will be that person and then the circumstances that support it will start to show up.  People will listen to you and begin to follow you.  

So work on the free association. Visualize the most satisfying visualization of your goal as a reality and record it in detail.   I encourage you to continue to do this as a standard habit in your life.

Once you have become convinced in your dreams it is now time to share involve others.  Next is skill three.