We’ve heard it a thousand times, stated a thousand different ways.

“Know what you want.”
“Be crystal clear about your goals”
“Have a vision for your life”
“Visualize what you want, or the result you are looking for”
“Act as if” (you can only do this if you know what you are acting as)

You could be listening to a sports psychologist, Abraham-Hicks, a high-performance coach, a self-help guru, and probably 20 people you know.

In at least one form, it is one of the most agreed-upon concepts and practices you can possibly find.

Nonetheless, I am amazed at how few individuals do this as a regular practice. Perhaps even an irregular (or ever) practice, and that’s among those who are already interested in inner-work.

I’m amazed how often I myself would not do this, or would have to be reminded of it, as well.

The Simple Test

If I were to present you a few primary areas of your life, could you tell me in some level of detail what you would want to have, do, experience? Do you have some degree of clarity about them?

Finances: how much money do you want to have? Not “a lot” but really, what’s an amount? What would it mean and would that free you up to do? How much do you want to earn? Are there passive income streams? A thriving business? A huge lump sum to where you don’t even have to think much about it?

Career: What does your calendar look like? Do you have regular clients? Are you working at a particular position, perhaps in a particular company? Are you an entrepreneur and if so, what do some of the actual details of your day-to-day look like? If you are in the arts, who are you working with? What gigs do you want? How often are you working, and on what level?

So it can go with other areas, relationships both personal and professional, health and body, really any aspect of life you can think of.

Of course, if you can’t answer any of these questions, there is no way you are “visualizing” (it does not have to be visual at all.) You are not consciously exploring and feeling into the experience as it would feel, activating the emotions and thoughts that begin to imprint in your emotions and nervous system, rewire your brain.

I know you’ve heard this before. The entire context I’m starting from is how often this is said and how it’s become almost cliche.

[ That cliche-ness is part of the problem by the way, it makes it easier for us to write it off. It’s not special or advanced enough. You already ‘know’ it, even if you’re not doing it, so it can get discarded. ]

What I hope to do in the following, is present a few reasons as to WHY this is so important, with a strong inner-work emphasis, that may be unique to what you have already heard.

Perhaps one of these reasons will resonate in a way that might spark a new perspective.

I’m sure I am not the originator of any of these ideas, but they have presented themselves to me strongly, especially from the role of facilitator.

Without a vision, you might only work on ‘problems.’

There are many positive, empowering, inspiring things you want in your life. Inner work, tools like EFT, releasing, visualization can be extremely powerful in helping to realize them, especially when directly applied.

Without some clarity of vision, and reminders for them, my experience so far is that the focus immediately turns to some kind of problem in our lives to “work on.” Many of these are not even huge problems or particularly relevant to what you want to create.

Maybe the blocks and challenges are related to your goal. This too can lead to an almost endless rabbit hole of finding other connections, events from childhood, other real or perceived issues to keep working on, without putting any energy towards actually creating your vision.

I have come across a common theme, an expectation that once enough negativity is worked through, everything we want is eventually going to just appear. One day we are going to release that final block or childhood event and then the money is just going to come pouring in.

I don’t believe this is a useful mentality, even though there are experiences where a certain shift can have sudden results.

I have found that directing time, energy and focus on what you actually want to experience, will drastically amplify real-world results. You may be working on issues and blocks to clear, but there is no good reason NOT to vision related exploration, visualization and feeling, along with it.

It will be difficult to discern what is really worth your energy and attention

This closely relates to the above in terms of inner work, and also applies to outward action.

Taking time to discover, focus or refocus, and feel into what your vision or ideals are around a certain area, centers things into clarity.

It is the discriminating factor that will determine whether or not you really need to keep digging up more blocks to clear around this issue, or if there is a more focused and direct route.

If there are blocks, it will more quickly laser in on those ones that actually are holding you back, helping to find the roots as opposed to the infinite number of branches to EFT tap on.

Spending time with the vision (even if it’s just the process of probing into what it might be, if it is not yet clear for you) also helps prioritize your actions. Is this thing you are putting mental, physical or emotional energy helping you move towards it, or is it a distraction?

A vision can often hold the key to other, seemingly unrelated issues in your life.

Clarifying what you want in different areas of your life – and to reiterate, clarity is not “I want it to be better” or “I want more money,” brings many other things into focus.

There are often parallels between what is holding back that ability to move forward in your career, to health, relationships, or even more seemingly removed areas. Zeroing in with more precision on any one area can often reveal deeper causes in others.

I could list several more reasons why this subject is important.

But I don’t have a vision!

You are not alone. There are a number of different approaches to this subject, I have my own sets of tools and worked with a group of individuals for 5 weeks on it. This subject and questions around it appear like clockwork.

The amount of videos online, articles, books, courses on this subject is huge. There isn’t a lack of information or resources for you to try.

Rather than present even more, for now, I would just put these forward to consider.

1)  It is impossible to not know on some level what you want. At minimum, what you know you do not want can begin pointing in the direction of what you do. Over-complication of this subject is very common.

2) Parts of you actively do not want you to zero in on this, because zeroing in on it is going to bring up things and go to the places that will bring actual results.

The part of you that wants to keep things as they are, because it has mapped that territory, does not want actual results because they equal change. It would rather you keep working on things that won’t move the needle.

3) With 1 & 2 in mind, it is up to you whether you accept “I don’t have one” as valid and pursue it no further, or if you decide “I will get more clear.” Even if that’s a little more clear. If you decide this, that alone is going to start moving things forward.

Spending some time actively pondering those questions around what you want in different areas, being present with your feelings around this subject in general – that is going to be powerful.

It’s more about actively approaching this at all, than it is to have the perfect formula. Remember, most people do not actually do this at all. You can do this first, and then if desired, pursue more involved techniques and structured approaches.

I hope this gives you some things to consider and inspires some energy to be spent in this direction.

I have personally seen several concrete goals and desires materialize in my life as a result of really focusing in on them, doing these cliche exercises. A number of them in the last year. I really want you to experience this for yourself and how positive it is, not just have something that feels like ‘homework.’

Comments, questions, concerns? This is an important subject to me and would love to engage in the comments below.