Understanding who you are and what you want is essential for knowing where you’re headed.

Too often we are influenced by the perceptions of what we think we want or who we are from a lens outside of ourselves. In reality, the creative journey comes from within and is different for each person.

If you’ve struggled with actualizing your vision, it would be crucial to consider if the vision you are working towards is your own.

In circumstances where we will ourselves forward on a path we don’t actually want to be on, we find a superficial drive in motivation and discipline. Only to come to the end of the path exhausted and depleted.

Self-determination theory tells us that we suffer when motivated by others and external rewards. We can’t avoid feelings of anxiety, shame or guilt by doing what we think we should be doing.

There has to be an intrinsic or internal source of willingness to pursue an end in order to release suffering and wholly enjoy what we are working towards.

Simply, if you’re looking for discipline to drive you forward, you’re seeing only the near future.

Discipline is likened to removing a tree from your path. You can hack at the limbs of behavior and make it through this season, or you can get to work on the root and create a personal, principle-centered approach that will carry you through years.

Our principles serve as a grounded source of discipline.

Let’s identify the principles that ensure your endeavors are grounded, paving the way for authentic growth and innovation.

Start by asking… What do you believe to be true about yourself?

Building principle-centered groundwork is the culmination of various parts. Draw from any source that provides perspectives that align with your beliefs.

Now that you know what principles you stand grounded in, it’s time to unlock your potential and cultivate a vision of what you want to accomplish.

Ideation and visualization are key steps in the creative process, enabling your dreams to take form and become tangible.

The vision serves as your compass, directing your efforts and decisions, ensuring that your actions align with your core values and aspirations.

Begin with identifying what you want to achieve in various areas of your life, whether in your career, health, relationships, or spiritual and philosophical growth.

Maybe you see this list and think, yes, I want all of that. Amazing!! You can use these same steps to actualize everything you want.

Let your creativity flourish as you explore new ideas and possibilities. This is where your potential starts to take shape.

While some may find this step the easiest, hello fellow space cadets, others can find it hard to conceive of something that has never been.

Visualization is an artistic endeavor, therefore I love to begin by creating a mood board. A mood board serves as an emotional connection to the vision, which is where it starts in you, as a feeling, a deep knowing of what’s possible.

There are so, so many amazing tools to capture inspiration and references for your mood board. Here’s a short list of some of my favorites. No affiliation or commission on these, I just genuinely love what they offer!

• ​mymind​ – offers a browser plug-in to save Google searches, quotes, images, pages, etc. Great for writing and creating spaces that sum up ideas.
• ​moodboardai​ – all the visuals you could dream up, with help from ai, for physical spaces, photography, and events.
• ​moood​ – great for those that have an array of visuals and ideas already saved, this system works like a blank canvas that offers a space to find order in the chaos.
• ​milanote​ – the middle ground between a blank canvas and generative ai, milanote gives you additional tools to curate your board, while giving you that canvas to conceptualize.

You’ve created the vision. Now to identify the milestones, the map, that will get you there.

This is how we make our vision actionable and attainable.

As with your vision, you’ll start big, set aside an hour for long-term goal setting. These will be the bookends you can work back from. This could be by year, quarter, and then month.

This will set you up to break down short-term and daily goals once you have the big picture in view.

Next, find one hour, usually less per week where you can pre-plan and allocate specific time slots for different tasks and activities. This is best done over the weekend or Monday morning to ensure you have identified all of your priorities.

The key is not to prioritize what’s on your schedule, but to schedule your priorities.

Don’t have a calendar where you write down your appointments and schedule? Get one. A simple iCal, Outlook, or my favorite Google Calendar, synced up to your smartphone are best.

If you’re like me, you’re probably thinking, I don’t want my whole life laid out for me. Where is the time for spontaneity and novelty? Rest assured it’s an iterative process, so don’t expect it to ever be complete or set in stone.

It should be fluid and malleable, just like you. More on that soon.

First things first, schedule in your allotted breaks prior to scheduling in your work.

If you don’t slow down, you’ll miss those moments of ease that can make the process smoother. Time and space for non-doing, for being still, in silence. It may sound counterintuitive, but prioritizing rest provides you with the momentum to keep going.

Then, identify your roles and obligations as an individual, as a parent, spouse, other significant relationships, and your career.

If this feels overwhelming you may be thinking with the outcome in mind.

To keep it manageable, consider one or two results you want to accomplish in the next 7 days.

As you progress on the path of creation, you start to see the manifestation of your efforts.

Your vision and principles materialize in the real world, reflecting the strength and clarity of your foundation.

Be flexible and ready to adjust your plan if you encounter obstacles or if your goals evolve.

No path is a linear line, sometimes you need to change the approach, but keep the summit, where you want to be, in sight.

That’s why maps are important, they can identify the different routes to get you to the same destination.

Today’s approach ensures that you are consistently refining your methods and enhancing your outcomes.

This journey is a testament to the power of continuous improvement. Through constant iteration and dedicated effort, you turn abstract concepts into concrete outcomes.

When you adopt a philosophy of continuous improvement you become limitless. Gradually learning and improving from experience leads to significant, positive change.

That said, you only want to take the effort to change your approach if you identify a problem in the current process. Change for the sake of change can be a waste of time and a subconscious distraction from your goals.

That said, the first step is to identify the problem.

Just stating the problem doesn’t get you very far. You will need to understand how it came to be.

Growth is a journey of continuous evolution and refinement of your beliefs and practices.

Celebrate your milestones and achievements along the way. Reflect on how far you’ve come. It will keep driving you forward as you continue to actualize what is possible for your life.

Ultimately, growth is when you discover that it’s not about the outcome, that the purpose is in the process of being.

The path is less about creating and more about awakening all the latent desires to live a fully integrated life.

A life that captivates your attention.

When you seek within you are never without.

From the summit, you gain a perspective that reveals the need for a purpose beyond your goals; as you’ll realize there are many more mountains to climb.

You’ll see your purpose is about something deeper… timeless… limitless.

The purpose is you.