“Whatever you can do, or dream you can, begin it.
Boldness has genius, power and magic in it.”
Goethe
Welcome to Part Three of The Vision Quest Program.
This aim of this stage is to start to get a plan down on paper and then to explore the reality of the plan.
In your daily practice you should now be:-
- Setting intention in the morning
- Reviewing your day and asking – What did I do right? at night
- Capturing your internal stories and re-writing the ones that aren’t supportive
- Asking – What am I grateful for?
Open the ‘Creating Milestones’ Exercise’.
Fill in the relevant parts of your Personal Development Plan as you do the exercise.
Open the ‘Developing an Action Plan’ Exercise’.
Fill in the relevant parts of your Personal Development Plan as you do the exercise.
Open the ‘Walking Between the Worlds Exercise’.
Are you 100% in love with FutureMe?
Review your Vision and Goals as needed.
Open and complete the ‘Getting Beyond Thinking Exercise’.
You may need to sit with these exercises for a few days and allow them to evolve until you are totally comfortable with the results.
Once you have completed them your final task is to ask:-
‘How do I reward myself?’
Congratulations you have finished Part 3 – you can now begin Part 4.
Once you have done the Vision Quest exercise and you are happy with your vision statements you need to take some time out and 'sit' in that ideal future. When you can see, feel and touch the ideal future look backwards in time to the present and think about what the key milestones were that showed you things were changing.
The reason we do this exercise is because the Vision itself may be so big that it is daunting – so big that you can’t get ‘into action’ around it – so big that you have a constant little voice inside your head saying ‘you’ll never be able to do that so why even try?’
When mountain climbers attempt to reach the top of Mt Everest they don’t simply start climbing and keep plodding until they get to the top. No – there are about 5 steps along the way – Base camp, Camp 1, 2, 3 and 4. The climb to the top doesn’t just go Base Camp, 1, 2, 3, 4 – summit, either. It goes more like Base Camp to Camp 1 then back to Base Camp then up to 1 then down to Base Camp then up to 2 then back to Base Camp etc. The reason is that climbers need to acclimatise to each new level of altitude. Until they have completed each individual step they can’t even begin to think about the next step. But they know each time they get to a new camp they are making progress.
Your Vision is the same. You need to develop specific Milestones along the way – stepping stones to your final destination. Then instead of focussing on the overwhelming vision, you can simply focus on the first step – which is a much more manageable goal.
Depending on what your Vision is you may need to do this for every one of the five key issues or you may be able to just develop milestones for the overall Vision.
Now the hard part – see if you can put some dates next to the milestones.
And finally ask – how are you going to reward yourself when you reach these milestones?
When you have completed this exercise, stick the sheet up on the wall underneath your life Vision. Now you should be able to see at a glance what you are doing here and how you are trying to do it.
Now you have the key 80/20 issues and milestones for either each one or the overall Vision the next step is to develop an action plan. For each issue there are 5 areas or conversations you need to address.
PEOPLE
Who needs to be involved?
How are we going to work together? – Game Rules
Whose support do you need?
Who are the switch throwers?
How will you enrol people? – remember W.I.I.F.M.? (What’s in it for me?)
IDEAS
Brainstorming
Challenge Dominant thinking
– What happens if we cut the aspect away?
- What are the reasons behind this?
- What are the alternatives?
Ask other people who are already there
RESOURCES
What resources do you need?
- $s, information, equipment etc
How will you measure success?
How will you celebrate success?
- include how will you thank the people who have helped you?
ACTION
Committed actions and communications
- Yes, No or Counter offer
BREAKDOWNS
Call it ! Then ask:-
What are the facts not the story?
What do you want? What are you committed to?
Are you still committed?
What conversation is missing? Or what action is next?
DO IT!
A good tool to use for applying these conversations is the DEAR loop:-
- D – Make a Declaration
- What is your intention? What do you want to achieve? What are your goals and expected outcomes?
- E – Exploration
- Are there any issues or concerns? Who are the key people? What ideas do we have? What are the milestones? What resources do we need?
- A – Action
- Make a commitment to take specific action
- R – Results/Review
- What results have been achieved and what needs to be done next?
Put your answers in the Personal Development Plan and then use the Summary page to summarise. Again this is an energy management question so just identify the key issues and the 10 most important actions. You can also take this page and put it up on the wall next to the Vision and the Milestones.
Once you have your Vision along with the Milestones and the Action Plan try the following exercise:-
Go off to a quite place where you can meditate and get yourself into a calm centred and relaxed state. Now take yourself forwards in time to the end point in your Vision (whatever time frame you set for your Vision – e.g. 6 months, 2 years, 5 years etc).
Come into the reality of your Vision as an observer. Find yourself – your ‘FutureMe’ - in your Vision and sit and watch and observe ‘FutureMe’.
How is FutureMe being? How is FutureMe behaving? How is FutureMe feeling?
Watch and observe FutureMe for as long as you can.
When you are ready come back to the present and reground yourself.
Now ask yourself – Am I in love with FutureMe?
That is, when you reflect on what you saw as your future self – did you absolutely 100% unreservedly LOVE FutureME??
If yes, your Vision is good. If not then you need to revisit your Vision and revisit and refine FutureMe until you do get to the point where you are in LOVE with FutureMe.
Once you are at that point you then need to practice Walking between the Worlds. Taking time to go to the future and observe FutureMe and the world in which he or she lives. Charge this world with as much emotional energy as possible. Ask yourself WHY you want this will stir emotions. Visualise it with as much clarity as possible so as to begin to put some spin and momentum into the Future/Present loop that you wish to create.
Remember the aim here is to train your mind to seize the moment of opportunity that arises in between thought and action and to take action aligned to the Future you desire rather than the Past that you are addicted to. By visualising the Future with emotional intensity what we wish to do is to start to tap into our feelings about this Future and hence create the corresponding chemicals AND replace our old addictions with new ones.
Make sense?
The more you Walk between the Worlds the more you will build a relationship with FutureMe. The more you will create a strong link between your Present reality and the Future you want.
Once you have done this - when faced with a decision in the Present you can simply ask – What would FutureMe do in this situation?
When you have your answer don’t try to rationalise it. Don’t try to justify it in any way. Just do it and slowly but surely you will become FutureMe.
The second part of Walking between the Worlds is walking backwards and reclaiming your power.
In this exercise, you need to identify any past issues that bother you or somehow limit you from being who you want to be.
Take yourself off somewhere quiet once again and get yourself centred and grounded. When you are ready go back to the time in question. Observe your PastMe for a while until you feel you have truly connected. Now sit down with PastMe and have a talk with them.
What do you feel you need to say to your Past self? What does PastMe most need to know so that they can be truly whole and truly powerful?
Make peace with PastMe and nurture them as much as possible. Help them to release whatever fear, doubt or anxiety they may be holding onto. Lastly, bring them into a space of joy and see them happy and playing.
When you are ready come back to the Present and reground yourself in the moment.
Now you know how to Walk between the Worlds.
Next challenge is to practice it until you are fluid in the skill and able to float between the Past, Present and the Future as your needs desire.
We have been led to believe that time flows forever forwards. That the past creates the present which in turn creates the future. This way of thinking sticks us well and truly in the mire of thinking, rationalising and worrying about how we can create the future we want.
But is this true? What if I suggested to you that time flows the other way around? That actually the future becomes the present which in turn becomes the past? That if you sit here right now perfectly still, doing nothing, the future will still continue to smack you right in the face. Could you release yourself from the mire of worrying and have some Faith then?
Try this exercise:-
Consider where you are right now in your life and then think back to all of the significant events, planned and unplanned, that have led you to be where you are right now. Identify the pathway that has led you to this point. Did you ‘work out’ that pathway? Could it be possible that the future has actually created the Past? That the act of holding that Future possibility (which has now become reality) in your mind at some level (conscious or unconscious) has actually led you along a path to that reality? If you didn’t ‘work it out’ in the past what makes you think you can ‘work it out now’?
Once you have done this exercise begin your day by doing some meditation and then consider the proposition that the future and the visions and dreams that we have for the future actually create our reality.
Now say to yourself or write out "Even though I do not understand how the world works I choose to believe that everything is perfect right now". Finally, release any worries or concerns you have to the Universe and set your intention that no matter what happens today, no matter how bad or good you may think it is, you will have Faith that it is happening for a very good reason - that you do not need to know what this reason is - and that everything is perfect right now.