Creating Your Vision for Your Business, Career, and Life
Many people go through their daily lives feeling overwhelmed. There are so many things to do and there never seems to be enough time or energy to do them all. Is this how you feel about your business, career, or life?
Have you promised yourself that this month you are going to make some serious changes but you just aren’t sure what those changes need to be?
Think about laying out a vision, but make it a big vision. One that encompasses your passion in life and the gifts you have come to share. No matter what the focus of your business or career you have a lot to offer. You are unique and only you can contribute your strengths in your special way. Whether it’s staying at home and raising a family, making the best widget there is, the CEO of a company, a manager in IT Life is not a dress rehearsal so create your vision of what you really want and then take inspired action steps to attract it to you.
Don’t think of creating a little vision for your life, it’s time to stop thinking small. You will also need to let go of the excuse that you don’t have enough time. When that comes to mind think of this quote from Life’s Little Instruction Book, compiled by H. Jackson Brown, Jr. “Don’t say you don’t have enough time. You have exactly the same number of hours per day that were given to Helen Keller, Pasteur, Michelangelo, Mother Teresa, Leonardo da Vinci, Thomas Jefferson, and Albert Einstein.”
These are the same steps I take with my clients to help them make the changes in focus and habit that bring them meaningful results. First you must be willing to take action.
Without changing your focus and habits you will never be able to change the results.
Without taking action you will never move forward and reach the results you want. Coaching is about getting results; listening to what the client really wants and working together, setting out the measurable steps to be taken that result in action and success.
You are responsible for the momentum; it will be up to you to take the actions on your own unless you choose to have the support, encouragement, guidance, and accountability that a coach provides.
Without the forward momentum and inspired actions it’s just a good thought. In order for your business to be successful, to be happy and fulfilled in your career, or prosperous and content in your life you need to have one common thread. Vision.
The process of creation starts with a thought, a great idea, a passionate want, or a dream of something magnificent to achieve. These are the intangible sparks that ignite our drive to move forward and turn the intangible into our reality.
Begin by brainstorming on paper, yes you must write it down to bring clarity, to make it real.
The first brainstorming session should be free flowing, don’t edit your thoughts or ideas. If you are working on your personal vision and your work vision to define what you want and how you want to spend your time, start with the personal vision.
This will give you absolute clarity about what is important to you, what you want, what are the things in your life you are passionate about and that make you feel fulfilled.
Then from there you can create the vision of your ideal business or career and take action to bring want you really want into your life.
Focus on what you really want, be very specific. Don’t just say you want lots of money, a nice home and no stress. Create a picture in your mind of exactly what you want down to the color of the carpet and the list of clients, and then using words draw that picture until your vision is clear.
For example:
I want a profitable and fulfilling holistic health practice.
I want to see clients in three different specialties plus passive income revenue streams.
A full successful practice will have 30-40 clients.
I will work five days a week between noon and six devoting the rest of the day to self-care, gardening, exercising, and spending time with family and friends.
I will make 100,000 a year and take 5 weeks vacation throughout the year.
I love to learn so I will spend 3 weeks a year in educational workshops and training programs to advance my career and myself.
I have several tape sets, workbooks, & learning products that fit into my personal and vision statement providing my clients excellent value and tools that help them to get on track with their lives.
These products are very rewarding to me because I can make money without having to be there. Making a contribution and improving people’s lives is very important to me so this is always something I carry out in my business practices and my community involvement.
I have redesigned my home to be bright and airy and laid out the gardens for ease of care, and to provide color and fragrance from my flowers and tastes and aromas from my organic vegetables. I avoid stress by focusing on the positive and focusing my energy on the things that are really important to me and just let the rest go.
You create what you put your energy on. If you concentrate on all the things you don’t want on all the things you don’t have enough of that is what you will create more of. Start creating what you do want.
Start with your vision; clearly lay out your life, career, and business vision and then take the steps to make it your reality. One of the steps might include hiring a coach to make it happen faster for you.
One of the worst aspects of the current economic reality is the continuing level of unemployment. While it continues at or around the 10% mark, it’s going to depress the amount of money spent on Main Streets up and down the US. People worried whether their next pay check will arrive are preferring to pay down their debts rather than spend. Combine this with the unwillingness of the banks and credit card companies to be more generous with credit limits and you have a perfect storm for small business to weather. It’s therefore welcome to see the Small Business Jobs Act. No matter what your politics, the idea of billion in tax breaks for business is good news. Whether it will actually do anything to create jobs is anyone’s guess. You will not find a single incentive for hiring a new employee. The government is working on the theory that, if your business makes capital investments, this will eventually create more jobs. Given two-thirds of all new jobs have been created by small business over the last three years and you understand why this breaks are targeted to the smaller businesses. Starting with the self-employed, your tax bill is going to be lower by about 15% if you pay your own health insurance premiums. The current position is that, if you employ people, the payment of their health premiums is deductible from the gross revenue of the business. But the premium for your own insurance is only a personal deduction. Just for 2010, the premiums will reduce the net earnings from your own employment. There are also changes to the system for claiming tax refunds which now allows you to go back for five years, the start-up costs limit is increased and the repayment period extended, the first year expensing deductions are doubled and the scope is extended to include leased property improvements even though they are not capital equipment, and the depreciation allowances are expanded. Finally, you can now withdraw some of your retirement savings to help cover your immediate trading losses during start-up. This is only a snapshot picture of a complex set of provisions. Further, more tax changes and breaks will probably appear during the remainder of this tax year. So you had better huddle with your accountant or tax advisor to advise you on how to take advantage of everything on offer. With the Administration on the hook to take action on unemployment, the small business market can expect more help. That some of this will affect small business insurance is inevitable. Just as the health insurance deductions have been modified to encourage more small businesses to maintain adequate plans, you can expect to see more breaks and allowances for investment. This spins off into insurance territory because, if the rate of depreciation on plant and equipment is increased, this writes down the value for insurance purposes, and so on. You may find it worth your while to have an insurance audit at the end of this tax year to ensure you have up-to-date values in place, e.g. on rebuilding costs for property insurance, the replacement of fixtures and fittings, and so on.
Advancement in technology and Internet has now helped people to make money online from the comfort of their home with little or no investment. There are many legitimate work-at-home jobs and home based businesses available today to suit different people’s needs. Here are few of them to help people get started with their own home business.
First well-known job option is a virtual assistant. People who can handle calls and have little knowledge on Microsoft office tools can definitely choose this option. Most small business people and freelancers look for an assistant who can work from their home. This method doesn’t cost them much money therefore, a person can grab this opportunity and can earn a decent amount of income per hour. These jobs can be found on many job sites listed on the Internet.
Next demanding home based business is the medical transcriptionist and this job is suitable for a person who has worked with the medical professionals. A person can either work with the individual physician or any group of medical professionals. The work of the transcriptionist is to listen to the medical professionals and type up the words. A person is usually paid on an hourly basis and a skilled person can earn up to per hour.
Next is the translator. People who have fluency in any language can go for this option. The work involves translating documents and audio files. The difficulty level generally determines the pay, and the higher the difficulty, then the higher the pay. This is one of the highly paid home based business jobs and demand for this position is highly required in scientific, management, and technical consulting.
Another great opportunity for making money online is a web designer. A person with good knowledge on designing the web page can obtain this job. The job listings can be easily found on the Internet or any local newspapers. The pay depends mainly on the experience and skill of the person, and also the difficulty in designing the web page.
Next great opportunity for home based businesses is teaching. It can be done either online or offline. If a person is expert in any academic subject they can apply for this opportunity. Offline teaching requires only presence and material for teaching. Online teaching also requires some knowledge about the Internet and some basic teaching tools.
“It’s scary when the ones who are going to drive the economic recovery and put people back to work are saying, ‘We’re going to hold off a bit because we don’t know what our government is going to do.’” So says Brian Calle. The columnist and editorial writer for the Orange County Register got fed up with public-sector jobs programs and sluggish private-sector job growth, so he decided to ask business owners why they weren’t hiring. The result is an ongoing, multimedia project called “The CEO Solutions Series,” in which business owners diagnose the problem and propose solutions. Reason.tv’s Ted Balaker sat down with Calle to discuss what should be done to spur private-sector growth, the role uncertainty plays in hiring decisions, why business leaders are often afraid to complain about public policy, and the myth of the laissez-faire CEO. Approximately 10 minutes. Interview by Ted Balaker. Shot by Hawk Jensen, Alex Manning, and Zach Weissmueller. Edited by Jensen Go to reason.tv for HD, iPod, and audio versions of this and all our videos, and subscribe to Reason.tv’s YouTube channel to receive automatic notification when new material goes live.