“Dissatisfaction and discouragement are not caused by the absence of things but the absence of vision” – Anonymous
Visioning a sexy-cool-bad-ass-off-the-charts-amazing second act life or career seems simple enough. Why then does it end up being so dang hard?
Coaching and coaxing clients to design a vision for a Sexy Second Act career or life they can’t wait to get started living is a challenge. Sometimes it feels like I’m trying to pull an elephant’s tooth with a pair of tweezers.
I know what you’re thinking. Tweezers are the wrong tool for pulling an elephant’s tooth. You’re right. And just for the record, I think most of us use the wrong tools for visioning.
I don’t believe anyone has an absence of vision. In my experience, when you are ready to get down to the core of who you are, you have “wow-some” visions. So “wow-some” they will knock your socks off and rock the planet. I’ve yet to see it fail. I’m blown away by the beauty and magnificence of my clients’ dreams.
Every. Single. Time.
I do believe powerful visioning comes naturally to human beings. I see it as one of our gifts. The failure in visioning is that somewhere along the line, you and I stop doing it from an authentic and playful place. And I believe that happens for a number of reasons.
- You’ve been taught not to dream
By the time you reach high school or college, the dreams you had at five – or thereabouts – of becoming a ballerina, astronaut, or President stop being cute to your caregivers. With good intentions, they’ve pretty well brainwashed you into believing that following any non-traditional path to success is actually the road to ruin. So off you go to do the “practical” or “realistic” thing. You put authentic visioning away for “someday-when.”
It doesn’t matter what comes after “someday-when” because from then on, your life is pretty much toast.
- You vision an outcome
Sometimes visioning an outcome works. But sometimes that outcome might be too far away.
If what you want seems like it’s too far off into the future, like retirement when you are fresh out of college, it’s not going to hold your attention or your energy for long. It’s a bit like trying to be warmed by a star in a different solar system. There isn’t enough heat, light, or energy to go the distance. Your vision is going to go cold.
- You see your dreams as being too big for little ol’ you.
You might feel overwhelmed by the magnitude of the gap between where you are now and the outcome you want. You give up before you even start because closing the gap seems impossible.
- Uncertainty scares the hell out of you
This might be the biggest cause of discouragement.. You want to figure it out and have all the pieces in place before you’ll go for it. But big dreams require you to do things you have no clue how to do. That’s scary! You might think it’s better to live with the devil you know than do battle with the devil you don’t know.
- You think you haven’t “got what it takes”
Other people are smarter, braver, more educated, more talented, luckier, prettier, younger, older, richer, or have access to more opportunities in life than you do. Everyone else gets the breaks. So why bother? It will never work out anyway
Okay, that’s the bad news. The good news is that everything you just read that stands between you and visioning the sexy-cool life you want is false evidence appearing real.
Stay tuned for the next blog where I’ll share tools that make visioning a whole lot simpler.
Are you having trouble visioning your sexy-cool-bad-ass-off-the-charts amazing Sexy Second Act life or career? Schedule your complimentary “Get Acquainted” coaching session and let’s dream together. We’ll explore tools you can use to get started moving forward.