Personal visioning to help us reach our goal.

Use personal visioning to challenge yourself to leave your comfort zone and take action.

I shared my story of breaking my race car transmission a few months ago. My mindset at the time was that of opportunity; I would get to rebuild a transmission for the first time. That all changed once I got the transmission out of the car and into many separate parts, and the deep thought of this is all new to me, and what am I doing attempting this set in.

When I have an item outside my comfort zone, I am the type that will delay starting if I have not set myself into a positive mindset allowing for exploration and potential failure. This transmission rebuild was slower than it should have been as I kept delaying getting started. Time eventually caught up and reminded me that if I did not get this going, I would not meet my deadline, and then I finally pushed forward. I am happy to say the transmission rebuild was a success, I learned a lot, and looking back, I wonder why I procrastinated since it was nowhere near as challenging as I had built it up to be in my mind.

In coaching, I see this same process with clients. They are eager to attempt a new way of completing or learning something new, but when they go to implement, something inside causes them to question their ability and sometimes delay action. The story they have developed is challenging them, with usually no objective evidence to support it.

Here is one of the ways I share with individuals in preparing their plan for getting through this new action – personal visioning. We work through a positive self-talk vision before attempting the action, including stating in the I am doing or have done, not the I should or want to manner. We are reminding ourselves why we are doing this, what the result is we are seeking, and how we will feel once accomplished. Working to develop the energy of completion and feeling it at the start helps motivate us to move through to completion. Seeing our success before reaching the starting line.

Next time you find yourself slow to take on an uncertain or unknown learning experience, the stuff outside your comfort zone, I recommend researching a method of personal visioning that you can apply to assist you in reaching the finish line. (Sometimes I need to remember the discussions with coaching clients and then apply what we discussed in the conversation for myself!)

Written by Steven Schultze