Want to create the life of your dreams?
Then you need a Clear Vision.
Unlike the popular idea about “following your passion,” your Clear Vision isn’t based on accomplishments or productivity. Rather, it’s a new mindset based on what creates genuine happiness for you, and how you and your gifts can contribute to the world.
Let’s be real. Making a long-lasting sustainable transformation of your life by design is going to challenge you to your core. It’s asking you to give up stories that have been holding you in the same pattern of being stuck for decades.
But that doesn’t make it impossible.
Your Clear Vision is supported by your Inner Platform, which is surrounded by inner trust, self-awareness, and a clear mindset. Sustainable transformation is possible and powerful because personal creative power is when you declare something possible and make it a reality.
Let’s make what was impossible to see possible.
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Your Clear Vision Declaration
Your Clear Vision is contained within a declaration, an affirmation of what you are creating, why it’s important, and who you need to be to bring it to life. It is how you plan to create your future by design. It’s a pop thought: Be. Do. Have. With a strategy.
Your Clear Vision doesn’t have to be complicated. It’s an acknowledgment of who you are becoming, the experience of life you want to create, and how to do it. It’s the culmination of who you want to be and what you want to do. It is a statement that will give you radical agency over your life’s outcomes.
A Clear Vision can be applied to any area of your life, career, business, spirituality, well-being, or leadership. Here are some examples:
Thought Leadership: Andi declared her article about millennial leadership would be published by the Cut before the new year.
Career: Dominic declared his Clear Vision was to set up virtual coffee dates with potential mentors from international teams to help him grow his executive presence.
Community: Lauren declared to grow her women’s community to five thousand people.
Well-being: Dinorah declared to eat a plant-based diet for three months.
Creativity: Aparna declared to perform her traditional Indian dancing at three venues.
Spirituality: Madeline decided to build an altar in her home for daily meditation.
Entrepreneurship: Cathy decided to quit her job and become a creative leadership coach.
Listen, you can make all the money you want, and be wildly successful doing it, and simultaneously have fun and be breathless with love and energy every damn day. You just need to massively recalibrate the story you are telling yourself about what’s possible for you.
To do that, declare how you want to feel and create a new story. This is creativity at its core. Designers, architects, painters, and poets see something that doesn’t exist yet, and they make it real. Allowing yourself the wiggle room to feel safe, open, and connected to your Clear Vision will expand your energy and begin to connect your idea to reality.
Find Your Clear Vision
Now that you have a sense of the power of a Clear Vision, let’s talk about how to create yours. When a creative team is given a client brief to kick off a project, their first step is to conceptualize ideas. A concept is the core idea, intention, and essence of your Clear Vision—in other words, the foundation on which your Clear Vision declaration is built.
While creating your Clear Vision, you are both the designer and the client. You are going to brainstorm concepts and ideas for your Clear Vision. In other words, you are going to find the answer to the following statement: “I am here to…and this is important because…”
You’re going to be dreaming, exploring, discovering, and adventuring, then moving that vision into reality. Finding and nurturing the concept behind your vision is pivotal. Your concept could be as big as space, human empowerment, affordable health and wellness, or an all-encompassing community. It could be as small and impactful as a new friendship, a deep connection to yourself, or a love match. It’s your vision, and it’s what is right for you, right now.
The brainstorming exercise below will grant time and space for your most vibrant self to thrive. So, grab a pen and paper. Get your favorite cup of tea, soda, coffee, bubbly La Croix, or something to stay hydrated and tickle your brain with liquid pleasure, because you’re going to need the lubrication. Then, find a comfy place to sit, and let’s do this.
Time to Brainstorm
Read through these questions, then close your eyes for a few moments to ponder them. Closing your eyes signals to your subconscious that it is safe to rest and pause. Closing your eyes allows the brain to divert attention from your environment and instead focus on your inner world.
These questions may all lead to the same answer, or they may spark different ones.
Just let whatever question resonates with you the most take the lead. It may help to add a time frame around the questions—like this year, next year, in the next six months, or in five years.
It’s your vision, so do what your heart desires.
- What do people ask me for advice on?
- What conversations do I want to be a part of in the future?
- What do I want to spend more time doing that makes me feel alive?
- What do most people think is true, but I know there’s another way to think about it?
- When I’m living my life from my Clear Vision, what does my day look like?
Now, refine Your Answers
Quickly release inner judgment by being unattached from any feelings of not knowing how to create what you just wrote down, or feelings like “I can’t do that!” that may have popped up. Now, read what you wrote for all of the questions. Are there any things you wrote that you feel like you should do, but, if you were being honest, you don’t want to? Or do they sound really boring?
Cross them out. Throw them away; we don’t need “shoulds” or ideas that are going to bore you in six months.
Notice any to-dos that may have snuck onto your list. We are not here to solve problems that we already know how to solve. These “problems” are in the way of you preparing to create your Clear Vision. Cross them out.
If it doesn’t light you up, cross it out. If it’s something your mother or father wants you to do—and you don’t—cross it out. If it’s something you feel you should do, but if you were being honest, you don’t want to, cross it out. If it’s boring you, cross it out.
Elevate Your List
Look at your delightful messy list and see if there is an idea that gives you butterflies. Or makes you feel warm inside, or scares you a little and gives you goose bumps (the good kind). This is your vibrant self giving you a sign, so listen up! Take out a bright highlighter and highlight it!
Now, review your list and highlight the thoughts and ideas you think have a possibility for them. Begin to look for patterns in what you wrote down as well.
If you are starting to sense an intention that is awakening an “Oh, maybe that’s something to explore!,” then you are ready to move forward. Or, if you are still in the Messy Middle, cool. Stay there.
Pick your top three ideas, patterns, theories, or concepts that are floating to the top of your mind. These could be wildly different or be in the same general family. You can see if any of these ideas have legs and try them on for size in real life.
Find Your Why
The final question in the brainstorming process is the most important because it’s what is going to get you through the moments when life is hard, you don’t want to go on, and you start thinking, “Wouldn’t it just be easier to go back to my normal nine-to-five job?”:
Why is this important?
Answering this question will keep you laser-focused and committed to creating your vision. Even when the outcome looks hazy or life gets in the way, it will become an inner mantra and saving grace to keep you motivated to design your Clear Vision each and every day.
Knowing why you are here and why it’s important embodies you in commitment, making you responsible for providing the outcome, regardless of how it happens. You know how you need to show up each and every day to create what you are most committed to creating, simply by who you are being.
This is the vision; the details come later.
Speak Your Truth into Life
We cannot control the outcome of life. Instead, we control our commitment to why it’s important and are willing to do whatever it takes. Writing and declaring your vision moves it into existence. This is the power of affirmation work, mantras, and positive self-talk.
The first step of making an idea real is to take the idea out of your head. Using your sense of touch—pen to paper—and your sense of sound—thoughts into words—you alert your subconscious that this statement is what you believe. And not only do you believe it, but you wholeheartedly know it is true.
This is your truth. Speak it into power and breathe life into its every word, every day.
I am here to ___________.
And this is important because ___________.
Now that you have your Clear Vision, you are ready to make it real