Week 4: Creating Your Practical Vision for the Next 3 to 5 Years
Before moving on to this Guidebook, take 2 minutes to post a celebration from the past week to our Facebook Group.
Click HERE to do so.
Click HERE to do so.
Where are you, now, in your journey?
We are now in our 3rd week of our 4 week visioning process, and the fourth week of the program. Is it going by quickly for you? Have you begun to find a rhythm of when to engage the guidebooks and exercises each week?
Let's take a minute to review where we've been thus far. In the first week of the program, we connected with the Thread-of-Guidance and engaged in the Fire Ceremony practice - letting go of what no longer serves us, as we move into the future. Then, we started the four-week Visioning Process with the Legacy Vision - looking back from the end of our lives at the legacy we have left behind. From there, we had an experience of meeting our Future Self in 20 years to get a visceral sense of the person we are actually growing into.
Now we are going to take all the information and embodied experience that we’ve had in these first 3 weeks, and begin to create a practical 3 to 5 year vision. Next week, we will focus on the 12-month vision around which you will create your goals and build your action plan.
Let's take a minute to review where we've been thus far. In the first week of the program, we connected with the Thread-of-Guidance and engaged in the Fire Ceremony practice - letting go of what no longer serves us, as we move into the future. Then, we started the four-week Visioning Process with the Legacy Vision - looking back from the end of our lives at the legacy we have left behind. From there, we had an experience of meeting our Future Self in 20 years to get a visceral sense of the person we are actually growing into.
Now we are going to take all the information and embodied experience that we’ve had in these first 3 weeks, and begin to create a practical 3 to 5 year vision. Next week, we will focus on the 12-month vision around which you will create your goals and build your action plan.
The Essential Principle of Time in the Visioning Process
Imagine you were looking at your vision through binoculars. With each week of this four week visioning process you are gradually adjusting the lens on the binoculars towards ever greater focus and clarity.
How would you take practical action on a legacy vision? Where would you start? Even a 20 year-vision can be hard to wrap your head around. But, having those longer-term visions as a foundation - i.e. the deeper layers of the visioning basket - gives you a vital context - i.e. healthy soil - in which to focus on the shorter-term future.
Why 3 to 5 Years?
We usually overestimate what we can do in the short term (i.e. one year) and underestimate what we can do in 5 or 10 years. So, if we think longer term, we can do more of what we truly want, because we are giving ourselves more of the greatest resource that we have - time.
If you start now, you can manifest quite a lot in three to five years. But, to really do it, you will need to start now, because it will really take you three to five years. Its a realistic amount of time where you have two resources that are essential:
If you start now, you can manifest quite a lot in three to five years. But, to really do it, you will need to start now, because it will really take you three to five years. Its a realistic amount of time where you have two resources that are essential:
- the time to create a well thought-out action plan
- the time to develop the skills necessary to follow-through on your action plan
In the Next 3 to 5 Years, You Will Build a Strong Foundation for your Legacy Vision : What will that Look like?
For the last two weeks you have immersed yourself in the vision for your long-term future. You have stretched the canvas of your imagination, and opened yourself to the guidance of your heart's greatest desires.
Now its time to begin to invite the practical mind to get involved. Here's a story from my own life to help demonstrate what I mean:
In 2005, the vision of creating a center for personal, social, and ecological healing first took hold in my heart. At that time I filled journals upon journals with ideas and visions about how to build this center. But, there was a voice in the back of my mind that said, "its gonna take you at least 20 years to do that, so there's nothing that you can really do now to get started. You don't have money to buy land, you don't have the degrees and certifications that you will probably need to pull it off, so what's there to do now...?" Over time, as I continued to hold this yearning in my heart, I realized this:
"IF I DON'T START NOW, ITS NOT GOING TO HAPPEN AT ALL. I NEED TO START NOW . I NEED TO TAKE MY BIGGER VISION SERIOUSLY AND ACTUALLY ENGAGE IT ON A PRACTICAL LEVEL. IF I INTEND TO CREATE A HEALING CENTER THAT WILL TAKE 20 OR 30 YEARS TO BUILD, I NEED TO ASK MYSELF, "HOW DO I BUILD THE FOUNDATION, SO THAT I CAN ACTUALLY BUILD THE HOUSE?"
So, this week is about looking at your Legacy Vision and who you intend to be in 20 years, and asking yourself, what are the core foundational aspects of this life-long vision that I need to put into place in the next 3 to 5 years, so that I am in a position to realistically create the Legacy Vision that I've articulated.
The Story of Joanna's Dream: Joanna's Fruit Tree took 3 Years to Produce Fruit
Think of the tree that Joanna planted. It took 3 to 5 years for the tree to start producing fruit AND for Joanna to get used to her role as "The Fruit Doctor." 3 to 5 years is a time frame in nature that is needed for something to grow into a place of genuine stability and resilience. When you think in terms of this Practical Vision (3 to 5 years), you are giving yourself the time to naturally grow into your vision.
When you invest your time and energy in the Practical 3 to 5 Year Vision, you are saying to yourself:
"I Take Myself Seriously. I am Showing Up For Myself, I am Preparing for More Responsibility, Now!
I am including what I shared with you in week one, because its an essential reminder in this week to take yourself seriously. As I said...
Believe it or not, the Business skills are actually the simple part. Its the development of your character - your inner resources and belief in yourself - that will actually translate into taking practical action. The key is to understand the deep truth that your presence in this world is of the utmost importance to the enterprise of life itself. As this belief seeps into your bloodstream, you naturally begin to take yourself, your vision, and your meaningful work, seriously. You begin to "show up" in your own life in the ways that are important to you.
As you start to move from that place of self-respect, you build the capacity and confidence to take your gifts, your vision, and your meaningful work seriously. By focusing on building this capacity of taking yourself seriously and taking responsibility now, you will be able to hold the new responsibilities that come to you over the next 3 to 5 years.
Establishing Your Long-Term Goals
Consciously choosing your future means, starting to think about what you really want to happen in your life. It means investing time, creative thinking and feeling into what is most important to you. You have begun to do this through your Legacy Vision and by meeting your future self. Now, its time to think about what is most important for you to focus on in the next few years, in order to build the foundation for the rest of your life.
Working Definitions: Vision, Purpose, Mission, Goals, Action Plans
Vision = What is so important that I will dedicate my life to it
Purpose = Why it is so important to me
Mission = The overall task that I am sent here to work towards
Goals = The vision turned into specific, measurable, achievable, realistic, time-framed statements that can then be broken up into step-by-step action plans
Action Plans = the step-by-step process of following through on your goals
For example, after looking at my own Legacy Vision and my experience meeting my future self, I came up with 7 core goals that are most important to focus on in the next 5 years, and I wrote them down as if they have already been completed:
- I have relationships with at least 10 professional advisors who, together, make up a formal Advisory Council for The Medicine Tree Center.
- I have a feasible financial plan to purchase at least ten acres in the Hudson Valley on which to build the nature-based Medicine Tree Center.
- I have offered the 6-month Sacred Business Program every year from 2013 to 2018.
- I have expanded my service offerings to include a shorter term (6-week) program offering as well as a 10 month program offering for advanced students.
- I now have 3 products that people can purchase without needing to enroll in a particular program or work with me privately.
- I offer a series of live events, such as half-day, full-day, weekend, and weeklong retreats.
- I produced a professionally recorded sound healing album.
While I have a general idea of how to acheive these goals, the truth is I don't know how it will happen yet. But, that's just not important at this stage in the game. Now that I have articulated where I want to be in 5 years - that is, what I want to have created in my work and life by then - I can then go about putting in place a realistic plan to make it real.
How do you know when you're in a stuck place in the visioning process?
You know that you are in a stuck place when you hear yourself saying something like this:
- “I don’t know what my vision is”
- “I can’t choose what I want"
- "I don’t know what I really want"
Its important to be clear about this. Using the spiritual principle from Week 3, you can ask yourself, "What is the origin of this thought?
Underneath thoughts of indecision are usually something like this:
- “I don’t believe that I can really get what I truly need.”
- And, even deeper down, you might be thinking: “I am scared to give myself permission to imagine what I really want because its too painful to let myself think about that when I don’t believe that I can have it.”
When you are not able to experience at least some level of clarity in your vision, you need to STOP and re-establish a sense of safety for yourself, within which you feel comfortable to let yourself experience your vision.
How do you know if your vision is really what you want? Go back to your purpose. Ask yourself "why." Why am I attracted to this vision in my life? What is the origin of this thought?
Next week, we will take this five year vision, and figure out how to choose what to focus on in the first year - which will become your 12-month vision. Then, you will create a 12-month action plan, which will clearly address the HOW. In the first year, you will focus on an aspect of the overall vision - a piece of the puzzle. By the second year, you will be able to focus on another aspect, and so on and so forth. By the end of five years, you will have built a solid foundation for your Legacy Vision.
Using the Spiritual Principles to Overcome "Stuckness" & Re-connect with Self-Love,Trust, Faith, and therefore, a Sense of Safety
This week's spiritual principle is "I have unique and essential gifts." This principle grows out of the first principle that we learned, "I am here for a reason."
When I feel overwhelmed, scared, or feel a lack of confidence about how I will be able to express what is in my heart, that is, my inspired vision for my life and meaningful work, I return to these spiritual principles, and ask myself: if I actually believed that these principles were true, would there really be any reason to feel stuck?
In softening my perspective, I realize that, yes, I am here for a reason, and I become aware that I am a unique individual with unique gifts. And, if I am here for a reason and I have unique gifts, then my presence here, in my body, at this time, on planet earth, must actually be essential. I must be essential to the whole evolutionary process of life on earth. And, if the presence of my unique gifts are essential, it must mean that the thread-of-guidance in my life is directing me towards the expression of my gifts. And so, it is my job to trust the process and open my heart to the sacred unfolding of my unique and essential gifts.
Below are the 3 sets of 7 principles. I will add the new principle to this list each week.
The 7 Principles of Life Purpose1. I am here for a reason
2. I have unique and essential gifts |
The 7 Shamanic Principles
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The 7 Steps to Self-Activation1. Finding the Origin of Thought
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Exercise for Week 4: Creating Your Practical Vision for 3 to 5 Years
If you haven't yet downloaded the recording from week 4, I suggest you do that now, and go to minute 57:25, where you will find the beginning of this exercise for week 4. It is much easier to do the exercise when you are being guided through it. I, myself, use the recording as well, to do these exercises.
As we begin this practice, let's remember that "the world is what I think it is"
What does this actually mean? Have you been thinking about it in the last couple of weeks?
One perspective is that the "World" is actually the mental construct that we have created for ourselves. Therefore, the "world" that we experience as real, is actually not the whole of reality. Reality is actually much more expansive than the "world" that we think we are experiencing. With this in mind, we are able to continually expand our awareness of what reality truly is.
In Gregg Braden's book The Divine Matrix, he says: "Einstein made a famous statement that we can't solve a problem while we're in the same level of thinking that created it. Similarly, we can't change a reality if we remain in the same consciousness that made it....To choose a quantum possibility, we must become that way of being...we must "abandon" ourselves to the new possibility and in our "love for that state...live in the new state and no more in the old state...The poet William Blake recognized the power of imagination as the essence of our existence, rather than something that we simply experience occasionally in our spare time...Philosopher and poet John Mackenzie further explained our relationship with the imagination, suggesting, "The distinction between what is real and what is imaginary is not one that can be finely maintained...all existing things are..imaginary." In both these descriptions, the concrete events of life must first be envisioned as possibilities before they can become a reality.”
What Braden is saying about the imagination, speaks directly to the teaching that we learned last week about the meaning of the Native American word for shaman - "powwow," which means "the one who dreams it into being."
Oriah Mountain Dreamer says it another way in her epic poem The Invitation: "It doesn't interest me what you do for a living. I want to know what you ache for, and if you dare to dream of meeting your heart's longing. It doesn't interest me how old you are. I want to know if you will risk looking like a fool for love, for your dreams, for the adventure of being alive."
How do you say it? What is the life that is living within you that is ready to be born into this world? What is the vision that is bubbling up in your heart’s imagination ready to be given your authentic powerful voice? What would your life look like if there were no limits? If you let yourself dream, and then create that dream. Clear and simple.
STEP ONE: Create Sacred Space
Tidy your room, light a candle and/or some incense, and invite the spiritual guidance that you already have a relationship with to be with you and support you in this exercise.
STEP TWO: Connect with Your Body and Breath
Do the breathing exercise that we have practiced on the medicine circle calls:
Take 3 minutes to hum, as you learned on our medicine circle calls.
STEP THREE: Through the Heart, connect with the Thread of Guidance
Feel the center point in your heart, and feel the thread of guidance moving back through you life all the way to being in the womb, and then even before that. Ask yourself, what was the reason that I chose to be born into the world? Why did I choose to incarnate at this time? Take a moment to see what emerges, and share with your partner, or write down your reflections.
Now, begin to move forward through your life, noticing the significant experiences that far, until you arrive back at the center point in your heart.
Now, begin to move forward along the thread of guidance into the future - through the four seasons of the coming year - spring, summer, fall winter, and then to spring of the next year - 2014. Now, continue to 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018.
STEP FOUR: Writing What You See, Feel, Hear, Taste, and Touch
Staying in the presence of your vision, gently open your eyes begin to write down what you are seeing. If you are working with a partner, you can speak your vision to your partner.
Take as long as you need to write down your vision. Just let the pen flow. Be free with your expression. Write everything that you can remember; whatever you saw, felt, heard. Write it all down.
WRITING TOOL #1: FOR RECORDING YOUR VISION
Take a full piece of paper for this. Evenly spaced down the page, write create space for each year, for the next five years, like this:
2013
2014
2015
2016
2017
2018
WRITING TOOL #2: Questions to remind you of specific aspects of your vision
Who are you in 2018:
- How old are you?
- Where are your close family and friends in their lives?
- What kind of person have you grown into? What qualities, characteristics, and personality traits have you developed?
- Who do you spend time with?
How has your income grown over the last five years? For example...
- 2013 - $20,000
- 2014 - $25,000
- 2015 - $35,000
- 2016 - $45,000
- 2017 - $60,000
- 2018 - $75,000
- How much money do you have in the bank in 2018? How has that money been flowing to you?
What does your meaningful work look and feel like?
- What are you doing?
- What does your work environment look like?
- What are you doing that brings you to life and excites your heart?
What do your relationships feel and look like (to self, friends, family, nature)?
- How does you body feel?
- How connected did you feel to your sense of meaning, to your heart’s purpose, to your core mission in life, and to the universe as one whole?
STEP FIVE: Create a List of Statements of What You Have Created in Your Life & Work by 2018
Write down a list of at least 7 statements of what you will have created by the end of 2018. Write the list in present tense, as if these visions are already manifested in the present tense. For example, these are the 7 statements that I shared above:
- I have relationships with at least 10 professional advisors who, together, make up a formal Advisory Council for The Medicine Tree Center. Advisors include spiritual teachers and elders, sound healers, successful business owners in the field of healing arts, legal experts/lawyers, financial advisors/planners, licensed professionals (LCSW, PhD, MD, ND), architects and builders, marketers/promoters, and thought-leaders in the fields of social entrepreneurship and healing arts.
- I have a feasible financial plan to purchase at least ten acres in the Hudson Valley on which to build the nature-based Medicine Tree Center.
- I have offered the 6-month Sacred Business Program every year from 2013 to 2018.
- I have expanded my service offerings to include a shorter term (6-week) program offering as well as a 10 month program offering for advanced students.
- I now have 3 products that people can purchase without needing to enroll in a particular program or work with me privately. These products will vary in price to make them accessible to people at different stages in their journey. Product ideas include a published book, an ebook, audio recorded workshops/lectures with a guidebook & exercises, sound healing products for wellbeing such as tuning forks, rattles, drums, as well as trusted nutritional supplements.
- I offer a series of live events, such as half-day, full-day, weekend, and weeklong retreats.
- I produced a professionally recorded sound healing album.
STEP SIX: HAVE FUN!!!
When you finish this exercise make sure to go out and do something for yourself. Go for a walk, make a nice meal, put on some music that you love and dance...or go out dancing or listening to live music. Go for a hike, watch a movie. Laugh hysterically for no reason. Rejoice!