🥳 Hey, Kasey here! Welcome to this week’s 🏔High Growth Founders🏔 newsletter.
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In This Issue:
I Need Your Help! Would you give me 90 seconds to tell me how I can make this newsletter more impactful for you?
Growth Insight: How to Create the Long Term Vision for your Future (and create the plan to get there)
High Growth Founders Episode of the Week: Why You Need a Morning Routine (don’t roll your eyes…)
No really, I need your help
I Need Your Help
I am considering some big changes to this newsletter. I’m asking for 90 seconds of your time to answer a few quick questions on how I can improve your life.
Growth Insight: How to Create Your Future Self
Whenever I talk about achieving your goals or becoming the person you dream of being, there is one question that dominates all others.
But what if you don’t know what you want?
People have a much easier time knowing what they want in the next 3-6 months than imagining a longer-term future for themselves — 3 years, 5 years, even 10 years into the future.
It all seems so far-flung and out-of-reach. In a world in which it feels like things move at a breakneck pace, having the self-awareness and cognition to be able to methodically plan our future many years ahead seems impossible.
Before COVID, this was almost more difficult. I traveled so much for work that when I couldn’t even remember where I was last week — let alone what I was doing — it seemed absurd to imagine where I wanted to be in a decade.
In some ways, the slowing down of time during COVID made this easier. I know I, for one, was more present in my moments and more aware of how I felt and what I wanted. But at the same time, the slowing down of time almost made me feel arrested in my current life. Imagining a different world for myself seemed like it was pure fantasy.
I say all of this only to remind you: You are not alone if you feel this way.
I am going to teach you a life visioning strategy that genuinely changed my life. I can even remember where I was when I first heard this method described.
But first, let’s take a moment to understand why this all matters in the first place.
Why Do You Need to Have a Vision for Your Life
Last week, we talked about goal setting and the fact that so many of us set goals we never achieve. There are a lot of reasons why this might happen, but one big one is that they are goals misaligned with what we truly want in life — our greater purpose.
And so they are less motivating, we are less committed, and devising a consistent path toward achieving them is harder.
Knowing what you want and knowing your purpose is proven to be one of the most important ways to achieve more in life. Without that direction, it becomes far too easy to grow distracted and miss out on the experiences and outcomes that would be most meaningful and rewarding to you.
Or as Lewis Carroll (as the Cheshire Cat) said in Alice in Wonderland…
I also think of something Greg McKeown wrote in Essentialism when describing the importance of a mission statement (either for a company or an individual). You want to make one big decision (your purpose) that makes 1000 decisions.
In a way, identifying that future vision for yourself helps you confidently say ‘no’ to the things that will not further your goal, so you can go big on the things that will.
Why is it so hard to have a clear vision for your life
If this is so important to our success, why is it so dang hard to have? If you think about it, it’s rare in our lives that we are taught to know what we want. What we really want.
Growing up, for the most part, our world is constructed around doing what the adults around us want. Going to school, following rules, doing our homework, etc. Our world is constructed by forces around us and we have some limits on our own agency and free will.
Parenting and family expectations have shifted in recent years, but as a geriatric millenial (eyeroll) with parents much older than most of my contemporaries, I was never guided to understand what I wanted. My role was to do what was expected, be polite, and please others.
It took being post-divorce in my mid-30s before I started to uncover what I wanted in this world. And boy, was it life-changing.
On top of that, there’s a phenomenal known as mimetic desire — powerfully explained in Wanting by Luke Burgis — which essentially means we are hard-wired to want what everyone around us wants. So if you work in tech, you probably think you want to start a tech company, even if deep down you really don’t. Or if you’re active on social media, it can be easy to assume you want to be a travel blogger, live that #vanlife, get fillers in your lips and face, or any number of other fads that fill our feeds.
Learning to separate yourself from the powerful forces around us is freaking hard! And it takes continual self-reflection and discovery. But it is possible.
How to develop a clear vision for your life
Before we dive in here, I want to be clear. This is more art than science, so know that you will likely need to do this many times so the vision has time to get clearer and you can more deeply understand what lies many layers beneath your surface.
I first learned the method I will describe presupposed you know what you want in life, but as I have used this method myself and with the many founders and business professionals whom I have coached, it has become clear that it can also help you uncover what you want.
I first learned this method while walking home from the train station during my afternoon commute in 2017. I can remember exactly where I was on that walk when I heard this practice described. It was on an episode of the Tim Ferris show when he interviewed Debbie Millman.
She describes it as Your Ten Year Plan for a Remarkable Life, a process she adapted from Milton Glaser. And I have now adapted my version from Debbie.
She swears by this methodology. She has been asking her design students to conduct this exercise for years and has countless examples of students reaching out at year 5 or 7 to let her know they have already achieved everything they mapped out in her class.
It is an exercise that can guide you, inspire you, and motivate you. In short, it can change your life.
Here’s what you’re going to do:
First, make sure you have time to sit quietly and reflect. You want to be in a calm, comfortable environment. Maybe you have a cup of coffee or tea.
I like to sit outside with the sun on my face. Or sit in my comfortable reading chair.
Now, close your eyes. Breathe deeply and get centered. Let whatever random ideas popping into your head about things you need to do or places you need to go fall to the side and keep directing back to your breath for a few moments.
Once you’ve calmed yourself, let yourself imagine a day in your life 10 years into the future. I find thinking about the details can really help set the scene.
How do you wake up in the morning? An alarm? A child running into your bedroom? Sunshine warming our face?
What kind of bed are you lying in? What sheets are beneath you? Is there someone lying next to you? Who are they?
When you open your eyes, what do you see? Are you home or someplace else? How is it decorated?
Now imagine the day as it progresses. Be as detailed as possible. Specificity will be the most telling and motivating as you navigate this process and reflect on your findings.
Start with your activities. Imagine where you invest your time and the kind of experiences those activities create in your life.
If you’re still working, what kind of work are you doing? What excites you about what lies ahead? What projects have you recently completed? How do you feel about all of it?
Where are you during this day? Are you traveling or at home? What does home look and feel like? If (or when) you travel, where do you go? What kinds of places do you visit, stay, or eat in?
Think about the people in your life and imagine how they impact your day.
Who are you spending time with? Do you have a partner? A family? Friends? Work colleagues? What are they like? How do they make you feel?
Think about your health — physical, mental, and spiritual.
Do you exercise? How is your energy level? What does it feel like to be in your body?
What is your mindset like? What do you dream of? What do you worry about? How do you show up in the world?
Are you religious or spiritual? Do you have any rituals you practice? Have you joined or built a community connected to a spiritual or religious practice?
You should have a pretty clear idea now. And if you don’t, if the vision is still thoroughly hazy, or even mostly blank, start with what you do know. Don’t focus on stuff — possessions or even jobs. Focus on the feeling. How does it feel to be future you?
When you have this vision fully fleshed out, write it all down. You can write it as a letter to yourself from the future, congratulating yourself on all you’ve accomplished. Or you can write it as a short story describing a day in your life.
Whatever you do, make sure you’re writing it in the present tense. As though all of these things have already happened. Again, be as descriptive and detailed as possible.
Save this story and every few months, pull it out and read it aloud to yourself. Let yourself feel the picture you’re painting, imagining what it will feel like to live that life.
How to apply your long term vision to short term goal setting
Now, if you want to get into the details, it’s time to map out some plans for getting you closer to that vision. A few ways to get started:
Go back through my goal setting to guide your life post and apply the methodology to break down this long term vision into smaller increments that help guide your progress
Think about future you. What habits do they have that you currently do not? What habits have they let go of that you still hold tight? How can you begin to embody that future you?
Use Future You to guide you. When you need to make a tough (or easy!) decision, pause for a moment and ask yourself what future you would do. Often times they are willing to make the bold, courageous choice that present you finds more than a little uncomfortable. Lean into that. Take that scary step forward and become more like the you you dream of being.
Remember: You have more wisdom inside you than you recognize. Gaining clarity on your vision can help you tap into that knowledge which lies deep within you.
Tell me. What’s one thing future you does that current you does not? Share it in the comments and use that as your incentive to make a change and start embodying your future.
HGF Episode of the Week: Why You Need a Morning Routine
I know, I know. Most of you just rolled your eyes at this. You’ve heard it a gazillion times. I thought the same thing too, until I tried it and it quite literally changed my life.
Within 30 days, I was happier, more productive, less stressed, less irritable, and more…at peace.
For real.
In this episode, I break down, why you need one and how to create one for yourself. Even a really freaking basic one.
Listen Now: Website | Apple | Spotify
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In love and growth,
Kasey