Balancing Vision With Action

When you plan your goals and visions, how much time do you spend on the vision part, and how much do you spend on the every day/action part? I’ve always thought that vision boards are a good way to create a vision in our mind of what we desire, with the intent of programming our subconscious that we actually have it, and thus our mind will nicely go ahead and manifest it for us. And while I’m not actually saying that is not true, or that there’s not value in creating a vision board, I did hear an interesting perspective at a seminar last week that had me rethinking that approach, and realizing the importance of balancing vision with action.

So there I am, in this seminar, and the presenter (Brandon Barber of Brandon Barber Coaching) puts pictures of two vision boards up on a slide. One has images of fancy things such as luxury cars and beachfront homes; the other has pictures of people getting along, making connections, phone calls and meetings. That relates more to a business context, but the every day pics might also be doing medical therapies, doing a work out, or any other small activity that feels less glamorous than mundane.

But here’s the thing. Another perspective on visioning might be – if we spend too much time daydreaming about the end result we want, we might lose sight and not spend enough time and energy focusing on the things that we need to do every day to get us there.

Let me give you the example that he gave us (I’m 75% sure this was a true story but will demonstrate the point well regardless). Once upon a time there was an Olympic diver. This diver had been training sooooo hard, but then broke three toes in the time period leading up to the Olympics. It could have been catastrophic.

How did she respond to the injury? Instead of wallowing in sorrow, and instead of giving up, she sat on the 10 meter high-board every single day, visualizing her dives. She pictured the spins and twists and turns, going through each dive meticulously in her mind. She didn’t visualize the gold medal, or the apartment she’d buy as a result of that gold medal and the resultant endorsements, or the fancy car she’d be able to buy her brother. She went over and over and over the activity that she would be doing to get to her goal. The activity, not the payoff.

So relating that back to the rest of us. It made me realize to be careful not to get so caught up visualizing the payoff, that we lose sight of rehearsing and visualizing us being successful in the every day activities that will get us to that end point. That makes total sense to me.

Don’t get me wrong, I think visioning big dreams and goals is highly valuable, and the presenter of this seminar wasn’t disagreeing with that either; the message was, just don’t do that at the expense of picturing/rehearsing the actions that you can take every day to get to the point of realizing that dream. In the case of business owners, that might be visualizing meetings, presentations, or phone calls that bring in more business; in the case of people recovering from illness, it might be visualizing a positive outcome from an infrared sauna session, an IV, a nutritious meal or a doctor visit.

Sometimes the every day actions seem mundane, but it’s the every day actions that that get us to our end goals, so vision the big things, as well as the activities that will get you there, for the most powerful result.