It’s really important to think about where you want to be in the future – and to visualize the success you see for yourself. This actually comes in handy when it comes to having financial success, a successful career, and a successful future for your family.
Visualizing success and where you see yourself in the future can help you make really those important decisions today, in a way that really benefits your tomorrow. Keep reading to find out how.
Focus on Where You Want to Be
Most people make decisions that only effect their present situation. In their diet, for example, they might think “how would it hurt if I just eat this one cookie now?” The problem with this, is that they’re only focusing on the “now”. Ultimately, if they make that decision every day, they’ll never get to where they want to be.
Worry about where you’re going to be. Spend more time thinking through your decisions, and seeing whether they align to:
- Where you want to be
- Where you see yourself
- What your success, happiness, and joy looks like in the future.
The reality is, if you’re not actively planning and making decisions that’ll help you get to where you want to be, it’ll be really hard to be happy in the now.
Change How You Make Decisions
One decision at a time is important towards reaching a goal but isn’t the mindset you should have if you really want to visualize success. It’s always better to move through life as if you’re playing chess, rather than checkers; In checkers, you’re working through the game one move and one decision at a time – while in chess, you really have to think through the moves and calculate the future moves of the opponent and yourself.
In life, it’s important to create a balance of making decisions for your present and future needs. While it’s important to focus some on the present, it’s equally important to ask yourself:
In what position do you see yourself in the future?
What are you earning?
Where do you believe you’ll be at?
How will you get there?
Are your decisions aligning with your goals for the future?
Thinking a bit differently is something that everyone needs to do to be exceptional[KJ1] . Have the confidence to believe in yourself, see into the future, and make sense of why you would do something today.
Why would I save money today? Because my future self, future spouse, and future kids are going to need it. How will we do the things we want to do in the future, if we make decisions now that will only effect today?
Balance Your Present and Future Needs
When it comes to financial success, a successful marriage, a successful future, and really any goal you have, a long-term outlook and balancing your current and potential future needs will help you be more successful.
Visualize your success, have confidence in who you want to be in the future, and believe in how you want to get there. Small habits and small decisions will lead to big ones later in life – and ultimately, that’s the mindset you want to have, and we want our families and children have as well.
Don’t Fall into a Negative Mindset
We’ve all had a challenging year after COVID-19 hit – but how we respond and react to that year can usually make or break our business. It’s very easy to fall into a negative mindset with all the frustration, and isolation that we had throughout the year.
When we start visualizing the negativity and only see the things that won’t work, that are breaking, or that won’t come to fruition the way we anticipate – then we begin looking for problems, and not for the solutions. We’re actually visualizing the lack of success in our future – and as a result of our negativity, that lack of success actually comes to fruition.
So many business owners have really faced lots of challenges this year. The successful ones, were the business owners that visualized their success by looking towards the future. They’re the pizza place on the corner that immediately switched to takeout and changed their entire way of doing business. They’re the restaurant that built outdoor seating because that was the only way to serve people. They chose to do something they would have never done, flipped on a dime to be able to serve people, and actually saw more business this year. They looked to the future and did things that took them to a whole different level.
If you’re an advisor, an insurance agent, a lawyer, or anyone in professional services, part of what we do is serve people – and when you can’t serve people sitting across the desk from you, it’s a pretty big challenge. If you visualize all the things you can’t do, though, and you don’t turn it into a solution, you’ll wind up getting caught up in the visualization of something that we don’t want.
Don’t Get Pushed Off Course
There were plenty of days this year where I got into a spot of negativity for a day or two, especially when we had the entire country shut down and life stopped. That was an enormous challenge.
I knew I had to figure out a solution that would help me and my family in the future. The way I found worked best for me was to work harder, work smarter, and evaluate all the things that we could do and really lay them all out.
I actually created a T-chart for all the things that it seemed like I couldn’t control, which is something that could be helpful to everyone. On one side, I listed everything I thought I had no control over – and on the other side, I wrote down all the ways I could think of to change those things into positive aspects that I could control. It’s visualizing the success that I wanted to see – even if it continues to be challenging.
Keep rolling with the punches. We fought hard this year and wouldn’t let anything take us down – even if we were on our back at certain moments. You might take a couple punches, but you walk out victorious, because what you’ve learned is:
- How to avoid those punches in the future
- How to visualize the results that you’re aiming for
- To not get pushed off course by anything or anyone.
Learn from Failures
Failure is a word that is so often equated with negativity – but failure gives us a way to learn. John Maxwell says, “Sometimes you win, sometimes you learn.” For many, this year gave us a lot of learning – and if we were smart, we took that learning and really developed it into our next plan of action.
This this is a message that goes on in perpetuity, because no matter what year it is, we’ll always have challenges. How we come out of it is so important when it comes to visualizing the success we want.
Focus on What You Can Control
When someone misses the big goal in a soccer game, or miss their penalty kicks, they usually say that they were just trying to figure out where the goalie was going to go. But guess what? The problem with that, is they weren’t focusing on what they can control. They can control where they put the ball, and the deep breath they take and let out before – and if they’re only focused on that, they did every single thing they could by visualizing their success. If they miss, they’ll learn from it – but at least they did everything in their power to try and succeed.
If you’re a business owner, and you find yourself getting in that mode of failure and negativity, it’s pushing you back and preventing you from being able to visualize all the things that aren’t working in your business. It’s time to flip it to positivity – and flip it to reality. Think strategically – take everything you know in the moment and figure out how you’re going to move forward to the very best place you can go – and if you fail, you fail forward by learning. Visualizing your success is the key, not visualizing the negative result that you may see, but that you can overcome.
What are some challenges you have been able to overcome? Were you able to visualize your success even throughout the challenging moments? Click here to share and discuss it with us.
