Vision

I was speaking with my coach last week and we were discussing goals. I asked the question, when it comes to work or other areas of life, how do I go about making the right goals for myself? Sometimes it feels like I need to be pursuing the next thing, but what is that? Should I be exploring new ways to expand my skillset? Should I be exploring other roles? If I don’t create new goals for myself, am I limiting my potential and becoming stagnant?

When I asked my coach, “how do you know when it’s time to leave for your next role?” and she said “you just know.” I definitely believe that. There are so many things I enjoy about my job, and it makes it difficult to willingly leave (and maybe why would I?). What would I even want to do? She suggested asking myself, “what do you want to learn?” and “what is your vision?” I found this to be a great way to think about things. Instead of asking “what goals should I have?”, it becomes a much more fun exercise. I get to be creative.

What do I envision for myself and what does that feel like? What would my day to day look like, and what are the things I want to be working on? Where do I want to travel? This is an invitation to daydream. I remember from my last conversation with this coach that she reminded me that we are all multi-faceted. We don’t need to pigeonhole ourselves into any one thing. The goal is to expand my knowledge set by exploring many topics that interest me and to have many diverse, fun experiences.

There is also a level of letting go and trust that needs to happen. As much planning and daydreaming as I may do, there are things that I truly cannot predict or plan, and I need to be open to surprises and opportunities coming my way. But there does need to be intention behind planning our lives. We may not always choose the right path, and we shouldn’t force things. But we can dream and plan and learn how to trust our intuition to take the next steps down new paths.

So, my new goal is to do just that — to put some intention behind creating new visions for my life. This means personal goals and goals for our family. What do I want to improve on for myself (career, health, friendships) and what are the things I want for my children? What new experiences and adventures do we want to have together as a family? Because I do know for sure that if you do not plan the trip, it will never happen. This is our one precious life, we need to ensure we are making the most of it, taking advantage of all our opportunities, and spending our time enjoying each other and experiencing new things together.