How can you keep your vision top of mind? How can you keep that beautiful big-picture vision front and center in your life when, inevitably, things get in the way?
In this week’s episode, we cover…
- Why you need to anchor your vision in your day-to-day life
- 5 different ways in which you can keep your vision top of mind
- Tips for how you can make this personal to you
I’d also love to hear your tips and how you make sure that you remind yourself every day, every week, every month of what you’re working towards, so get in touch!
*Resources mentioned during the episode*
The Outsiders Business Incubator – A mentoring programme focused on implementation support and accountability to help you grow your expert business faster – without sacrificing your personal life to do so. onestepoutside.com/grow
Keep your vision top of mind
Welcome back to the podcast. And I have a slightly different episode for you this week, especially because last week was very tangible. We did a website audit, very hardcore, we pulled a whole website and we asked some questions around the messaging being clear the call to action, the navigation and so on. And to sort of round off this month, I do still have an interview for you next month, but next week, because it is a long, long month, July this year. But to round things off, I had a couple of you actually asked me this the last few weeks, and it’s been something I’ve been pondering because I think is really important, which is how do you stay anchored to your vision?
Okay, you’ve got this incredible ambition, goal, vision of the future. How do you keep that vision top of mind especially I guess, when you get stuck in the weeds of, you know, the ins and outs of the day to day tech website audits and less the sexy things and the financials and life happens and everything right?
So I have five ways for you today that you can keep your vision top of mind and of course, if you have another strategy another way of doing this that I haven’t mentioned, because I’m sure there are many others I’d love to hear from you. You can message me on Instagram, Anna Ste Lundberg, the SAE by the rest Sofia, Elizabeth because Anna Lundberg is a very common name in Sweden. So some of my handles I’ve just chosen to go with Anna St. Lundberg. Luckily, I do have the website, Anna lundberg.com, because my dad had the foresight in the 90s whenever it was to get that domain. So thank you, dad. But there you go. So you can connect me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or email me at podcasts are one step outside.com. I’d love to hear your feedback and your ideas. But in the meantime, these are five ways that I’ve come up with to keep your vision top of mind.
And I suppose first, of course, I have to lay the groundwork here to briefly look at why this is so important.
And given that you’re asking me this question, I think that it obviously is important. But it’s important, because you need to remember what it is you want in order to actually take the actions that will get you there. It’s important because it’s going to keep you motivated through the inevitable ups and downs or difficulties along the way, it’s going to keep you focused on the right things, and really help you stay committed to have that conviction to have the confidence to show up consistently or work on those goals because you have them right front and center. And you know exactly what you’re working towards. Right. So it gives you the clarity, it gives you the emotional connection with that vision, it makes it so much more meaningful. And it really helps to connect you with with your why. So with that, out of the way, let’s look at those five ways to keep your vision top of mind. The first one is a not very sexy one, but I think it has to be on my list.
It’s to regularly review your goals. So we had an episode recently where we looked at the quarterly mid year review. So of course, if and I don’t know what your vision is, is it usually we you know, we set goals for the next year, but your vision is probably slightly more extended maybe to the next three to five years, let’s say. So you you have that vision set for the big picture. And then you need to be breaking that down into goals, right? So to make that vision real, then needs to be translated into Okay, what do you want to do the next 12 months, six months, three months. So we do annual reviews, quarterly reviews, monthly in particular. And it’s business related, of course, but for any goal, whether it’s fitness related or relationship relationship, related, weekly.
And then by all means, you know more regularly, you can be journaling. First thing in the morning before you go to bed, whatever it is that you like to do to stay on top of, of the things you’re working on, I found some of these things a little bit different difficult. Now with little kids, I just don’t have control of my mornings, for example. And in the evening, I’m very tired. And but I can kind of bookend my day with you know, when I sit down at my desk, I can start with a particular exercise at the end of the day before I wrap up. And I certainly do have a journal by the bed where I can from time to time, relatively regularly and right there as well. But the first way is really to regularly review goals. So if you’re not doing that, that’s an easy place to start. The second is then related to that having daily reminders, and that’s really tangible as well. I talked about the journal there. But find yourself a planner, I’d love to develop a planner. So that’s a little bit on my bucket list to create something that supports you and supports clients in my programs. But find yourself a planner that I haven’t created for you but that works for you. I’ve used several over the years and where you can really set your intentions for you know, the week I’ve got one that’s a 90 day planner, sort of a an evergreen one that again, I’m setting the intentions for the 90 days for so the three months for each month for the week for the day, and just remind yourself of what your intentions are for each day. So that’s just getting even more specific. Now the next year are a bit more creative and a bit more? Well, I’ll let you be the judge of that. The third one certainly is one that I’m sure you’ve heard about before. And I’ve talked about it. But I meet people who are coaches and say, Yeah, I always recommend people to do it, but I don’t do it myself. So if that’s you, please have a go. It is the vision board. So this is if you’re not familiar with this idea of a collection of images, words, that remind you of what you’re working towards, right. So the most organic way of doing this is grabbing. And I’ve done this with clients where you get a group of friends together if you want to grab lots of different magazines from different types of industry industries. But yeah, different areas, you know, could be sports, wellness, magazines, business magazines, travel magazines, just so you get a range of different pictures and words and things.
And then just flip through and like cut out words and images that resonate with you.
And that’s the most natural way of doing it. Now, I’m quite digital. So I have also, especially when I’m a bit more clear as to what I want, I’ve Googled images. And then you can obviously copy paste into a keynote, you can make it the screensaver of your computer, which by the way, even if you don’t do a vision board, having the desktop wallpaper being something is can be a great anchor of your vision as well. Or you can do a Pinterest board that you scroll through now and then. But if you do any of those things, I guess the Pinterest or the digital one, then yeah, you do want to if you again, because the question here is how we keep it top of mind printed out, put it out in front of you fold it up in your wallet, put it on your fridge, keep it by your computer, and make it your desktop background, to remind you of what you’re working towards, because that’s the real key here. So a vision board. Now the next one is a quote. And if you have been lucky enough, and I know many of us do find a quote that really resonates and really reflects where we are, at this stage what we’re working towards, then then that can be really powerful.
Again, you can have that as your background as a screensaver, just have it I had a framed, framed quote that I have that’s probably been lost in a move somewhere, it’s probably in my, in my cupboard back in our broken house, which is hopefully not so broken when this episode goes out. But I had discipline is remembering what you want. And that was really important for me at the time, it may mean nothing to you, but it meant a lot to me. It’s that idea of showing up consistently, the stuff the you know, the accountability, the persistence, and so on that isn’t particularly fun and exciting at the time. But it’s remembering that actually, that’s what’s going to get you to where you want. So if I want to be a best selling author, then having the discipline to show up every day and write and so on is what’s gonna get me there, if I want to run a marathon that having the discipline to train over and over again, is obviously going to get me there. So having a quote, again, printed out, journaling, putting on your desktop, et cetera. And then the final one, and I hope this has given you a feels very short this little episode, but I hope it’s giving you a little idea as to what you could do this one maybe is a bit more unusual is having some kind of token.
So for me, the thing that comes to mind is a shell. Because I wanted to live by the sea, which I am now doing Oh, and obviously it was thanks to the shell. So having a shell on my desk to remind myself that I want to be by the sea. And that’s what I’m working towards, you know, some kind of physical token, obviously, I had that framed, quote, it could be an image, it could be a graphic, it could be a picture, but a bit of physical item that reminds you of what you’re working towards why it’s important, you know what it could be your why it could be, let’s say you have a young family, and that’s your y or an inspiring, you know, perhaps so a relative who passed away, he’s always been kind of your beacon that the person that you’re really inspired by, and you’re kind of doing this for them, it feels like you know, something, someone that reminds you of what you’re working towards, it could be a cuddly toy, or something like that. So those are five ways to keep your vision top of mind. And maybe they’re not super complicated. But it doesn’t need to be complicated, right? The point is, you don’t just want to sit in and do this vision, and dream things up. And then just go, you know, we go on holiday, we go away on an incredible retreat, and we have a weekend away, we come back to our day job and in many cases, you know, back to that corporate grind. And before we know it, we’ve forgotten entirely what we decided that we were going to do. So that’s what we don’t want to have happening to you.
So make sure you’re regularly reviewing your goals. have daily reminders, using some kind of planner or journaling routine to set your intentions every day, create a vision board and then have it front and center desktop, screensaver framed fridge magnet whatever. And a quote that can be really meaningful to you.
Or a token a physical item that you can find that really represents by the way I I’ve talked before about the big rocks which comes from Stephen Covey and I teach that a lot in a webinar on time management that I do for corporate and every time I do and I need this prop I really need to so I’m gonna please hold me accountable to this. I want to buy a jar with five big rocks to put in, or at least a rock. And I’m just thinking now that could be a token to write to remind yourself. So if you’re not familiar with the big rocks is the big rocks are the big meaningful things in your life, it could be your role. I’m a mother, I’m a business owner, and so on. Or it could be areas of your life. So it could be my five L’s I’ve got my wellness and health, I’ve got my personal development and growth, etc. But it’s the big rocks that you want to put in first. And then allow the little gravel and Greyson sand to fall in around us. That could be a visual representation. There’s the book by David Allen eat the frog, you might want to have a little frog in front of you. I have a little Yoda actually, I’m just suddenly coming up with all these things that I had, I had a little Yoda, there was a little mentor guide. And that was really valuable. I had a little I had a little title. Anyone else know that song? In my head from the kids. And I had a literal, literally vile, and I’m sorry for this if this is. Yep, cultural misappropriation. But when I was in Peru, there was a market that had witches. And that was obviously very exciting. I’m descended from witches. So maybe it’s not misappropriation, if I’m from that background myself. And it had little like, choose like little, it had a plane on it to represent the adventure that I wanted, I had a couple and I wanted to meet someone you know, it was very meaningful to me, it’ll be like a silly thing, perhaps you might think.
But for me that was really meaningful. So you know, whatever it is for you have that front and center your token, physical token. So again, I’d love to hear from you if you have a token, your favorite quotes, and how you found the experience of vision boarding because I know people can have mixed feelings about that. If you have a favorite planner journal, give me all the goods please message me on Instagram, LinkedIn, or you can email me at podcast at one step aside.com. But I hope there was something in there for you. Maybe a token, maybe a quote that you can use. And again, if you want to share your own thing that you’ve come up with, and I’d love to hear from you share on Instagram, if you’re up for it, and tag me that would be really lovely to inspire other people as well. But thanks so much. I hope that was useful. And I’ll see you back here next week. I think our final interview for this month and then it’s August what is happening 2023 He’ll see you next week. Bye for now
WORK WITH ANNA
Let us help you design a business and a life that gives you freedom from the 9 to 5. There are several options for how you can work with us. Choose the programme that’s right for you.
The Outsiders Business Incubator
A mentoring programme focused on implementation support and accountability to help you grow your expert business faster – without sacrificing your personal life to do so. onestepoutside.com/grow
The Outsiders Business Accelerator
An ongoing mastermind for service-based business owners, freelancers and online entrepreneurs who are ready to achieve success on their own terms. onestepoutside.com/accelerate
The Outsiders Business Academy
A self-paced course for you to work through in your own time, to learn – and implement – the foundations of building a profitable business that lets you escape the 9 to 5. onestepoutside.com/course
1:1 Coaching & Mentoring
If you’re looking for one-to-one support to help you achieve your specific life and business goals, Anna has a limited number of spots for individual coaching and mentoring. onestepoutside.com/coaching
The Outsiders Business Incubator
A mentoring programme focused on implementation support and accountability to help you grow your expert business faster – without sacrificing your personal life to do so.
