Do you have 2020 vision?

I’ve worn glasses since 4th grade. My mom realized it when she took my sister and me to see the movie The Toy starring Richard Pryor. During the lake scene, when Pryor gets bitten by piranhas (see clip below or click here), I couldn’t make out the marks on his shirt when he ran out of the water. So I leaned over and quietly asked my mom, “What’s on his shirt?”

The next day she made an eye doctor appointment for me and I’ve been wearing corrective lenses ever since.

So, to answer my own question from above, no, I don’t have 2020 vision.

And aside from getting used to glasses in the beginning, wearing them never bothered me. Until last year. When anger and frustration over my poor vision consumed me like, I suppose, a piranha attacking its unexpected prey.

I’ll spare you the emotional details behind the frustration. Suffice it to say, I began questioning why all of a sudden my lack of clear vision bothered me.

Lack of Clarity, Lack of Business Vision

Then, at the beginning of December, I read the book, The 12 Week Year, a road-map for setting goals and getting more done in less time. Who doesn’t want that, right?

Here’s the thing. In the book the authors write that before you can set goals and accomplish them, you need to have a clear life and business vision. A vision that you are emotionally connected to so that when you get off track (i.e., saying yes to projects that don’t make sense, bright-shiny-object syndrome, or procrastination) you can find your way back again.

The more I read, the more I realized, Holy crap, I don’t have a clear business vision. 

Learning from Past Mistakes

Now, I can’t say that a lack of business vision is why my eyesight is so bad, though some of my intuitive healer friends might say otherwise. What I can say is that a lack of vision has made it very hard for me to grow my business. I’ve launched project after project, some with success, some without, yet often pulled the plug. All because I didn’t have a clear vision or road-map. I didn’t know WHY I did what I did.

Hindsight is most definitely 2020.

So, I spent the final weeks of 2019 and the first week of 2020 clarifying the business vision I want to achieve. And while my eyesight hasn’t yet improved (I’m still hoping!), the outlook of what I want to create through my business has. 

What’s Your Business Vision for 2020?

I work with professionals and entrepreneurs all the time who don’t have a clear business vision. 

Maybe they started their business like I did with an idea and a passion and didn’t know about vision.

Or maybe they were unexpectedly promoted to leadership without any formal training or time to reflect on what leadership really means and what they want to accomplish and why.

Instead, they spin their wheels day after day, project after project, without making real progress. They are stressed out, overwhelmed, burning out, and suffering from impostor syndrome because they are not tapping into the fullest version of themselves in their new role.

If that’s you, please, I beg you to stop it.

The World Needs You and Your Ideas

Especially if those ideas improve the well-being of others.

Make time for self-reflection. To think not only think about what you want to accomplish but WHY you want to accomplish it. Ask yourself (and answer!) the tough questions. Pick up the 12 Week Year, get planning and apply that business vision to everything:

• Why am I holding this meeting?
• What do I want to achieve at this off-site?
• Why this presentation and why now?
• Why do I want to start a business, write a book, host a retreat?

They are tough questions that need answers. But if you aren’t willing to do the work, how can you expect to get positive results in anything you try to do?

So, the way I see it (and yes that’s with my glasses on) we have two choices:

1. Get out now before the piranhas eat us alive, or,
2. Let this be the year we see clearly and create 2020 vision.

Piranhas are mean, so I choose #2.

What will you choose?

Your Turn to Talk to Me

• Do you wear glasses?
• If yes, how long have you worn them?
• What’s your business vision for 2020?

Oh, you want to know my business vision for 2020? Thanks for asking. You can read my shiny new mission, vision and values statement by clicking here.