There’s a delicate balance between dreams and drive.
I’m road testing a new motto. What do you think?
“Invite tomorrow, empower today.”
Catchy? Can you see on it on a motivational poster with some dolphins and stuff?
I’m trying to catch a really important balancing act that’s central to the success journey.
The balance of today and tomorrow. Of where we are and where we’re going.
If you’ve done any work with me, you know how much store I place in goal setting and vision.
It’s the bees knees. And in many way, this is where the real creativity lies when it comes to creating the life you truly want. Once you know where you want to go, the rest is just logistics.
So when we’re starting out, we need to paint ourselves as clear a picture as possible of what it is that really stirs our spirit and puts a fire in our pants.
We need to see ourselves, in that house by the beach, the boat in the garage, time off during the week to potter about and do our thing, our beautiful partner and beautiful kids happily gathered around us.
Or not. Maybe the image is you, on your own at last, trekking along the Great Wall of China.
There are as many visions as there are people on the planet. Every one is unique.
And so we’ve got to put the time into finding ours. What is the life that we are called to?
Once we have this, once we have that peg in the sand, everything else starts falling into place. Once we have the destination, we can start to see the road we need to take, and the preparations we need to make.
But this is the important bit. We need to bring that vision back and ground it in our current reality.
“Visioning” you life can become a form of escapism. It’s fun to imagine ourselves on a yacht in the Bahamas, away from our annoying in-laws and dead-end job.
We also need to remember that these life visions can sometimes be bitter-sweet. Imagining a life debt free with a passive income to boot, is beautiful, but maybe a painful reminder of the mountain of debt you’re currently saddled with.
We don’t want to over-indulge. Too much day-dreaming can bum you out, when it’s time to wake up and face reality.
And imagining the destination is important, but sometimes it gives you no insight into what you need to do here and now.
I mean, imagine you’re on top of an ice-cold mountain. Your vision is to journey down to the coast where it’s warm and sunny.
You might think, when I get there, I’ll be wearing a bikini. Therefore, I should put on a bikini now.
And so you end up freezing your bits off.
The destination and the journey are different things.
And really, we’ve got to come back to where our power is. And where is our power?
It’s not in some abstract idea at some imagined time. Those things don’t exist (yet). There’s no creative power there.
Our creative power lives in the body, in the moment, in the here and now.
So when the time comes for action, then we want to bring that as close in as possible. Bring it right back to our current reality and current situation.
Sometimes that means facing up to some uncomfortable things – facing some hard realities. The bad debts, the difficult relationships, all that.
But the closer we get to our ‘centre’, to what is actually happening, the closer we get to our power. The closer we get to the territory where we can have real power and influence.
It’s about pointing our body towards the coast, and taking one step, with our left foot.
It’s not about imagining what colour our bikini is going to be.
So we have to hold these things in balance. We need to dream and we need to vision. We need that destination. And once we have a sense of that, our goal setting gives us a road map.
But when it’s time for action, then we need to ground it in the here and now. We need to be moving from where we are right now.
And so that’s what I mean when I say, “Invite tomorrow, empower today.”
Invite that new reality in. Open up the doors, remove the obstacles, and let there be a road that takes you from here to there.
Invite tomorrow.
But then empower today. Put energy into the here and now, where it matters – where it has traction.
And when you have these two in balance, you might be surprised at how quick the journey can actually be.
How are you empowering your today?