What People Ask Me About Vision {Part 1 of 3}

This is Part 1 of a 3-Part series on the questions my Vision Coaching clients most popularly bring to our work together. This series is a gift to my readers during Valentine’s Day week. Special thanks to my previous clients and my Inklings e-newsletter subscribers for weighing in on this.

First, my definition of entrepreneurial vision:

Inklings, foresight, intuition, plans, dreams, goals, big picture conception of what your work in the world can look like, according to your unique predilections for using your gifts and talents — in detail, in vivid color, and well articulated.

Photo by Whitney(; courtesy of Flick Creative Commons.

Part 1 of this series is about Your Vision & the Big Picture. Without a doubt, the two questions I most often get asked in this realm are. . .

1. How can my entrepreneurial vision really come to fruition when I have so much competing for my attention? Is living for a vision realistic?

2. How can I be content with where I am right now while I’m working toward my ultimate vision, while keeping forward momentum and not settling for the status quo?

The fact that these are two of the questions my clients bring to our work together is revealing. It shows that you’re thinkers and pragmatists, people who don’t feel at ease until you’ve got some traction and a foundation beneath your dreams. You don’t even want the pie in the sky until you can feel the ground beneath your feet. You want the lay of the land first.

So let’s get grounded in reality, where I know you like to be.

There’s no magic pill that will orient your life toward accomplishing your creative work above all else.

There will probably never be a time when all you’ve got to be concerned about is fulfilling your creative urges and tending to your business. Don’t get it twisted — the only people who get this luxury are the hermits, the misanthropes, and the monastically creative. If you were that type of creative, you’d already have that set-up. But you don’t, so you’re not.

So you have other stuff on your plate besides your business. Of course you have a lot competing for your attention. You’re a 21st century entrepreneur living a 21st century life. You’re a partner/parent/caretaker/employee {if you’re part-time self-employed}. You have offline relationships and friendships, a family life {yes, parents or siblings who live five hundred miles away count}, your hobbies {non-monetized creative pursuits}, your self-care {health, fitness, spirituality}.

If you’re in an online space where complex and invigorating ideas float by like pollen seeds being blown off dandelion fluff, you have even more competing for your attention. {We all know that chasing these pollen seeds can comprise the better part of an 8-hour day.}

So how do you make sure your vision comes to fruition in the space and time you have left over?

The key for you, 21st century entrepreneurial spirit that you are, is re-laying your foundation in your own mind.

From this moment forward {this moment, as you’re reading this post}, it’s no longer about establishing your vision in the cracks of what already exists in your life. It’s not about fitting your vision in between the realities you’ve already created — relationships, home life, hobbies.

It’s about establishing your vision as the foundational layer in your mind that connects all the rest of the stuff together, and letting the rest of your life flow around it. The “rest of your life” is so important. Your entrepreneurial endeavors are, too. Equally important. You’ve got to see and treat them as equally important if you want to begin to live them out.

Living for a vision is realistic if you treat your vision as though it were your incipient reality.

I’m not advocating for airy-fairy dream-chasing.

I’m advocating for conscious, leaning into it, consistent, micro action-oriented, intentional pursuit of your vision, starting from the foundation up.

I’m advocating for getting clear on what you want, for writing it down, for articulating it wildly to a few trusted confidantes. {I do this and it helps so much for reminding me what I’m about.}

I’m advocating for you and your one life in this skin.

About the second question — staying content in the now while you keep your forward momentum — that’s a tricky one.

The best advice I can give you is this: stop trying to know it all now, do it all now, see it all happen now.

You watch a movie one scene at a time; you don’t upload it to your brain in a second. If you slow each scene down, the movie plays out in frames. And if you analyze each frame, each one is a portrait of micro movements made by the actors in the foreground and the extras in the background.

Things happen in their time, not in ours. Trust that not all of the pieces and players are in place yet for you to accomplish all that you dream of, or else it already would’ve come to pass.

Patience, my friend. Patience, purpose, and preparing the foundation for your vision.

Can you relate? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

See you in Part 2!