As we move into the fall months, it’s important to maintain focus, channeling our drive and motivation to make our vision a reality. Fall is a time of change for many, so it’s the perfect time to take action and potentially shift to the right path that will help us reach our goals!
The three blog posts from the last month, highlighted below, reflect actions that can be taken to achieve just that: get clarity, use your imagination, and tap into your brilliance. When practiced in that order you can move forward with a course of action that highlights your strengths and creativity, as outlined in The Inner Edge.
Are you ready to embrace change and follow your new course of action? Let’s explore some the steps that can be taken, featured on this blog over the last month:
In Getting Clarity on Your Vision: An Interview with Patrick Byrne, CEO of Overstock.com I reveal my conversation with Patrick, and the insights he gives on how to refine your vision as we move into the last quarter of the year. Patrick is an inspiration for me, and words are something to keep close at hand if you’re having trouble narrowing your focus. When it comes to helping a vision materialize, he shared with me a powerful personal anecdote:
“But just as I have to help other people see that vision, I have to stay committed to it myself. In this role, I become the entrepreneur constantly reaching for that next horizon and driving toward it every day.
I’ve had cancer three times. Each time I recovered I took a bike ride across the states, from California to New York. As I was bicycling I used to think about the Atlantic Ocean. I’d think to myself, “As along as I’m pointed east and I’m still pedaling I have to be getting closer.”
In business, this same kind of ongoing commitment to following the right direction has to be a habit, a personal characteristic. We don’t have that same kind of concrete destination, but we do have a vision, and we have to keep moving towards it. Entrepreneurs have to overcome insurmountable obstacles. We have to keep on pushing ourselves. Once in awhile someone invents something that’s intrinsically a brilliant idea, but it really is the perspiration that makes it happen. It’s perspiration in the face of not knowing if you’re going to succeed. It’s not knowing how high the rock face is that you’re going to climb, but you’re going to keep climbing anyway.”
You can use imagination to refine your vision, and to develop creative ways to achieve it. In The Role of Imagination in Business: An Interview with Michael Gerber, founder of E-Myth Worldwide I shared a conversation I had with another CEO, Michael Geber, who founded E-Myth Worldwide. When discussing how imagination plays into leadership and business, Michael said: “The imagination, the spiritual self, has nothing to do with business, but it has everything to do with business. No one can expect to lead any venture or opportunity with any success to the degree they leave out the soul of the process. It’s the soul of the process that brings leadership to life.”
Now that you’ve isolated your vision and channeled your imagination, it’s time to understand your distinct natural attributes and be able to leverage them in the most powerful way. In Tap Into Your Brilliance Now: An Excerpt From “The Inner Edge” I give an excerpt and exercise from one of the practices in The Inner Edge. The philosophy behind the practice of tapping into your brilliance is that you are hardwired with certain characteristics that make you you – distinctly, irreplaceably, inimitably you. If you don’t know what those characteristics are, don’t worry. I also provide a quick exercise to help you “map your DNA,” or map a simple list of your strongest positive and negative attributes.