I used to have a real vision plan. I even mapped out what I wanted to achieve in year one, year two up to year five in order to “reach my vision” – which, by the way, involved living by the beach in another country and lots of other things I likely put on that list because I thought that’s what success looked like.

I did this exercise with a client once and all over sudden “make a million dollars with my business” appeared on the list. We had already worked together for a few months and I had never heard of this aspiration before!

This seems to happen for a lot of us – as soon as we try to define success for ourselves, we start painting other people’s visions instead of our own.

Nonetheless somehow figuring out what success looks like is an important element to creating a life where you get to wake up excited most mornings.

So what if we could make our vision less about success, and more about the things we want to fill our daily life with?

Because in the end, this is where we live: Now, in our everyday lives.

I don’t think vision maps work very well since they are not very actionable. Sometimes they just seem to emphasize the gap between where we are and where we want to be. They can be paralyzing without giving us a roadmap we can follow.

So instead I really like to do ideal day exercises with my clients. In doing so we look at what her ideal average Tuesday would look like, we tweak it to see if it really fits her. Then we start taking tiny steps to pull parts of that vision into her daily life.

(after we’ve done the work of creating space, of course)

So for example, you might see yourself as a confident woman who routinely works on her craft. Or your future-you might be incredible at taking time to rejuvenate herself. What could you do now to start pulling that vision in a little closer? Maybe it’s three minutes of quiet meditation or asking yourself “am I hungry?” before you dive into the fridge.

You can do anything that helps you pull in that vision today, trusting that you have to start somewhere and that it all adds up.

I’m currently doing pay-what-you-can Ideal Day Sessions. If you want to get a real feel for the life you want to live and how that translates into your daily life now, email me at iris[at]irisbarzen[dot]com with the subject line “Vision Session”.