As many of you know, we have asked you to spend time the past few weeks articulating what you believe your Purpose is in this life, and given that Purpose what your Vision is for how your life will look in 3 – 5 years. Then we asked you to identify the 5 – 7 major Obstacles to living your Vision right now so that you could consider some initial Action Steps to getting around those Obstacles and live closer to your Vision.
For those of you just joining us in this effort, you can click on the links above to review each post or you can simply begin today to consider how to spend a little time each day doing the things that will get you around your Obstacles and living closer to a life that brings you joy, pride and connection.
People usually come at the Purpose and Visioning tasks in two ways. Some people jump in and do the work but then fail to act. They understand it cognitively, but they don’t integrate it into their lives. Others take on the work with great fervor and intensity but that often leads them to feeling overwhelmed and so they let it drop. The best way to come at this type of exercise is to work at it a little each day. We know that this is a challenge since there is a lot coming at you every day and much of it feels urgent (and some of it actually is urgent.)
This is what we’d like you to do this week. Whether you have gone through this entire visioning process or just have some things you want to create in your life, we’d like you to select one thing to focus on this week. Just one. Then we’d like you to do something for 15 – 20 minutes each day that supports you getting around the things (obstacles) that get in the way of your vision for your life.
Here are some examples:
If you said that your Vision is to live a healthier life then perhaps one of the Obstacles was “I eat too much junk.” So this week, we’d ask that you put something like this into each day: shopping for some fruits and vegetables that you like; putting candy, chips, and other tempting foods in a inconvenient place in your house; making up a big pot of steel cut oats so that you have a healthy breakfast each morning without a lot of work; bringing baby carrots and hummus into work so you have something good to snack on; keeping only dark chocolate in the house; making a plan to eat a meal or two with a friend who you know eats quite healthfully; and identifying the closest farmer’s market to your house.
You will notice that there were no demands for huge change, there was no expectation that you spend hours on this Action Step, and getting a healthy dessert was even built into your week.
This week, we encourage you to pick one or maybe two things that you want to work on and take a small step each day to move yourself toward success!