Learn how to:
- Write an ideal vision statement
- Work with a vision partner to have it come to pass.
Podcast Notes:
Hello there, this is Dr. Nieters again, and last week we started to do, Kathryn and I, who is here with me, started to do a little work on what one could call coaching, someone could call it facilitation. I call it being a Sherpa. But on helping you realize your potential and create the life that is ideal for you and kind of the life that’s worth living. And that’s always the question. Is this the life that’s worth living? Is this worth putting every ounce of my attention and being into? and there’s no right or wrong thing.
Maybe it’s you want to be the world’s best orchid grower. Maybe you want to be the best mother or you want to be the best with – whatever it is. But what is it that’s worthy of you? As I mentioned last time, Mark Twain said the two most important days of your life are the day you’re born and the day you discover why you were born. What is your purpose?
And so that’s what I’m going to urge you to do, is (A) look for your purpose, look into your history, look into your feelings. What movies do you watch? What TV shows do you watch? Who do you admire and who do you admire is probably the biggest.
You know, it’s like people will do workshops in loving themselves or really appreciating themselves or feeling good about themselves. And basically they don’t work. Basically what works is, determine what it is that you admire in others and then be that yourself – and then you’ll admire yourself. And it works every time.
I’m going to talk at some point about the use of different affirmations and why usually they don’t work, but how to empower them so that they do work. There is a particular way to do affirmations that is effective.
Now, today, I’m going to urge you to really look at purpose that may not come to you immediately. I’ve worked with people, you know, for sometimes fairly long periods of time to really uncover their purpose. So I would suggest that you look into that. If you get stuck, get in your car and take a drive. Go someplace, go to a bookstore that you’ve never been to before and just walk through and see what inspires you. And sometimes it’s just, oh, yeah, that’s right. I wanted to be a forester. I wanted to live in the woods and take care of our natural beauty and our forests. And I forgot all about that.
02:49 So whatever it is, I want you to work to become more cognizant of what that is. Now, I’m going to move on a little bit to the vision part, which is step 2. Once you have a purpose, then you need to create a vision. Now, what I’m going to recommend that you do is to create a vision statement. And that’s a must.
03:20 And I’m going to urge you to find a vision partner – that’s highly recommended. When I started my acupuncture practice decades ago, I hired a coach. Someone said, ‘well, you’ve been coaching people for 20 years, why would you need a coach?’ And I said, ‘Well, because nobody can B.S. me like I do’. And so a coach for me wasn’t so much about new ideas, although I did get some of those. It was about holding me accountable for what I said I was going to do and to stay on track with my vision.
The vision statement – and this is where this can actually be an effective way to use an affirmation. Now, there are many people who teach this stuff, and I don’t mean to make them wrong. I’ve just never found it to work where you say something that you know is not true, like ‘I’m rich, I’m totally wealthy.’
04:24 Do you really believe that your brain knows when you’re lying to yourself? Or “I’m a great athlete, I can do X, Y and Z.” Well, can you? If you can’t, your brain knows that. And it not only won’t move you toward your vision, it’ll actually move you away from it because of the lack of integrity that’s involved there. So a vision statement should always be written in the positive and it should always be in present time.
04:56 Now, the key with a vision statement is you must communicate it either out loud or to yourself – in state. Now, what I mean by that is if part of your vision is to be a really energetic, excited person. If you’re reading your vision statement, you go, yeah, my vision is to be a really excited person. Guess what’s going to happen? Nothing.
So you have to feel exactly… precisely the way you say your vision is, like “today, I’m doing everything in my power to become wealthy”. OK, now you can do that, right? Or “today I’m taking significant steps to become wealthy” and I’m using wealth because it’s easy and it’s somewhat measurable. Now, if you get in state truly like, ‘oh yeah, this is what I’m doing today. I’m going to take three steps, three significant steps to becoming wealthy, and I am going to do that right now.’ So if you do that in-state your brain believes you because you’re in that state and you’re in total integrity with yourself and congruity with yourself. And that’s a believable statement that will set you up in a goal. The brain is a goal finding organism.
You tune it to a task and it will seek out whatever it is that you put it to look for. So you need to make sure that you’re properly programming your brain.
06:39 “So today I’m going to take three steps. I’m going to start in ten minutes and take three positive steps toward becoming wealthy.” Then you need to tell yourself why that’s important, “because with the wealth, I will be able to fund all of my goals for bringing health to the world.” Or it could be “because then I’ll have all the luxury cars I want.”
It doesn’t matter what it is, it just has to be true for you. And so I’m taking these steps today and this is the vision that I have that’s going to arise out of this.
07:17 So I would suggest you just start writing some. I won’t often offer this, but if you want to send these to us, I’ll take a quick look at it and tell you if I think it’s functional for you. It can be as short or as long as you want it. As long as it actually communicates what it is that that you’re setting out as your vision.
It could be “today I’m going to take three solid steps to finding the perfect wife.” Great! You can do three things right.
Then you write down the three things, get clear about them and then why: “I want the perfect wife because”… And what you specify what that is. “It’s someone that’s intelligent, is self-motivated and kind and empathetic. And that’s important to me because I want to raise a family of healthy, empathetic, conscious children”. So however that comes out for you. Write that down and every single day (and it’s best if you do it at the same time, every day) read your vision statement out loud.
08:34 And you do it in state. And if you don’t do it in state, keep doing it until you get in state. Maybe you have to go do some jumping jacks, maybe have to drink some coffee, whatever it is, until you get in state and then communicate it.
And from there it will start to happen. At first it may be rather slow. Over time it will take on absolutely magical qualities.
09:02 Now, that’s the vision statement. Then the ideal thing is to find a vision partner. Good vision partners are extremely difficult to find. It doesn’t have to be a friend and sometimes it’s way better if they’re not friends. Just find someone that wants to change their life. Talk to them about this, maybe direct them to these podcasts and someone that wants to make significant change in their life. So then you get a vision partner and their job is to hold you accountable.
09:36 OK, and so I’m going to tell you a story about one of my vision partners. This is many years ago. This was in my first year of acupuncture school and it was a difficult time. I had gone through a divorce. I was broke, but I was in acupuncture school and I was a real estate broker at that time. And so while I was in the program I had a vision partner. Her name was Betty Wolfe. Betty was one of the, I believe, one of the first females to crew a sailboat and the Transpac race across the Pacific Ocean when we were vision partners.
She told me that part of her vision was to climb Mount Kilimanjaro. I found out that she did that, of course, because she was committed and understood intention and also lead a bike tour across Italy. Which was long after I had known her. I checked it out and she did lead a 250 mile bike tour across Italy. So, a very powerful woman, a great vision partner.
So I was in school and I’m working on my vision and I would read it to her every day and she’d read me hers and we would give a comment on it.
And you go, ‘Yeah, you’re not in state. I don’t get it at all.’
And you can tell if someone’s in state because you get it. It’s like, ‘oh God, I just can’t wait to start this’. You go, ‘oh shit, I want to help’. Excuse me. ‘I want to help you. Let me help you do this.’ And you can’t help yourself. And if that doesn’t happen, they’re not in state.
11:08 And so this one morning, I’m kind of tired and I’ve been doing this for a while and I’m just not really with it. I’m having a little trouble getting in state. But Betty was an awesome partner. And so I’m reading my vision, going through it about getting through acupuncture school and all the people that I want to help and to give my life to service, etc. And she’s saying, ‘yeah, I don’t get it’. And so I had to repeat it probably 30 times before she got it. And of course, as soon as she got it, I was on fire.
But then she asked me an incredible question. She goes, ‘So are you going to go to China?’ And, you know, we all have a rap. Someone says, are you going to do this or whatever? And we have our rap. ‘Oh, yeah, yeah. I’ll get married someday and I’ll do blah, blah, blah’. But it’s a rap. It isn’t really conscious at that moment. So I started on my rap. It’s like, “oh yeah, you know, when I finish my acupuncture program, I want to go to China and I want to…”
She said, “no, do you want to go to China?” And I said, “Well, yeah.” And I started my rap again. And she goes, “Do you want to go to China?”
And I said, ‘yeah,’ she said, ‘I don’t get it.’
She said, “do you want to go to China? Are you willing to go now?” And I said, “yes! yes, damn it, I’m willing to go to China right now.” This is a true story, by the way. Absolutely 100%. That day I go to school and I’m sitting in a very long Herb class.
12:42 It’s like four hours long and I’m sitting kind of sideways in my chair. So the teacher can’t see that I’m nodding off. And I looked to the back of the room and the woman that was the head of the administration is standing with the president of the school. And it only takes me a couple seconds to realize she’s pointing at me. And, of course, my brain went to ‘Oh, no, I haven’t paid my tuition yet. They’re going to throw me out of school today.’ And anything else I could think negative. And so she motions for me to come to the back of the room and I get back there and she goes “Sifu…” and that’s what you call that’s an honored title of a martial arts master or someone that’s a master of something she said, “Sifu wants to know if you’ll go to China?”
And I said, “yes! yes, I’ll go to China!”
And she kind of backed up and she goes, “well, if you go, you have to leave tomorrow.”
“Yes! I’ll go. I’ll go tomorrow!”
She said, ‘Do you have a passport?’
“Yes! I have a passport!” And so the next day I was on my way to China, representing the school, representing Sifu, and I had more wild experiences than if I had gone a hundred times as a private citizen.
13:53 I mean, someday maybe, I’ll tell those stories publicly, but events that no one could imagine actually happened. And if I had not said yes immediately, because I didn’t even know Sifu at that point – he didn’t know me, just the woman that was in charge. Administration said, you know, he’s a bright guy, and wears a suit. You know he knows his way around. And, we should see if he wants to go represent the school. If I had hesitated for a moment, one moment, I would not have gone to China. So you want to get clear because these opportunities appear all the time.
14:29 All the time. Whatever opportunities you want, they’re happening. They’ve already happened. They’ll probably happen today. They’ll happen tomorrow. You just have to be so in tuned. Have so much intention that it is blindingly obvious when they show up. And I could tell you another hundred stories like this, but that was one of my most fun. So anyway, I went to China.
So create a vision statement and again it doesn’t have to be perfect, you know, write it down.
15:01 “I want to have a pretty dog,” whatever it is, and then keep going with it until it’s really worthwhile. It’s really worth your putting your attention and your life force into. “I want I want to become a doctor.” You’re forty years old. People go back to school and become doctors at forty years old. At fifty, they go back and become attorneys. I went to school with people that were 70 years old guys getting their acupuncture license.
So give up your excuses. Write your vision statement and then start seeing if you can enroll someone in being your vision partner.
15:38 OK, if you want to send me your vision statements, I’m happy to take a look at them. It’ll take a few days for me to get back to you, but get that written and find a partner.
Next time we come, I’m going to talk a little bit more about how to do long term goal setting to bring that into reality in the short term. OK, so be happy, be healthy. I’ll talk to you in about a week.
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), Western Perspective, Integrative and Functional Medicine.
The Balancing Point health radio talk show about Traditional Chinese Medicine, supplements, nutrition, and more. Host Dr. John Nieters, acupuncturist and health educator. http://www.thebalancingpoint.net
Inspired by this podcast to take action in your life? Visit Alameda Acupuncture.
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