28. Being a Visionary Woman

Remember the first time you dared to dream big? I sure do. It was the morning of my first in-person workshop, a day marked by uncertainty, risk, and the overwhelming possibility of failure. It was from this experience, that I discovered the concept of vision-driven thinking, which is a powerful tool that I unpack in this episode. I'll teach you strategies to put your vision into action, trust the universe, and watch the magic happen.

So grab a pen and some paper, put on those earbuds, and join me in this transformative episode to help you take strides in the direction of your dreams. 

What You'll Learn From this Episode:

• The two most important things to be a visionary woman.

• What is vision-driven thinking and how it helps you to focus on your dream without getting caught up in the "how."

• Why the willingness to endure uncertainty and failure increases your chances of success.

• The difference between vision-driven thinking vs. condition-based thinking.

• Practical strategies to put your vision into action, without ever compromising your dreams.

   

Featured on the Episode:

• Robert Fritz
• Ep 3: How to Program Your Success GPS
• Ep 24: The Power of Vision
• Mary Morrissey
• The Life Coach School
• The Results Formula
• The Science of Getting Rich by Wallace Wattles 

If you want to find out more about how coaching with me will help you get in touch with your dreams and start living them, here are some resources for you.

Book a Free Strategy Call  Click here to book a call with me

Get my Free Course  Click Here to learn How to Get 10 Hours Back a Week

Get my Free Workbook Click here to download  How to Coach Yourself

Listen to the Full Episode:

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Full Episode Transcript:

📍You're listening to The Success Minded Woman with Deidrea Kiesling, episode 28, Being a Visionary Woman.

Here’s a quote by Robert Fritz that summarizes so perfectly what we'll be talking about today: “If you limit your choices only to what seems possible or reasonable, you disconnect yourself from what you truly want and all that is left is a compromise.”

So, stay tuned where we will talk about being a visionary so that you are not left with compromise.

Hi, I'm Deidrea, wife, and mom to three teenagers, coffee snob, and certified life and business coach. If you're a high-achieving, goal-oriented woman and you know you were meant for more, then you are a success minded woman and you're in the right place. I'm here to help you make the money and the impact you've been dreaming of, to step into your confidence, create habits and systems to support you, ditch that and post your syndrome, and harness the power of your mind. If you're ready to create a life and business you love, then let's go. I'm so glad you're here.

My wish for you, all my beautiful listeners, is that you don't compromise on what's possible for you, on your dreams, for yourself and for your life. Everything you dream of is possible for you, and in this episode, I will tell you how to be a visionary so that you can be your best self, create your best life.

Hello and welcome back to another episode. Today is really a special one, and I'll tell you why. It is 5:20 a.m. on a Wednesday morning and I am up early here to do this podcast.

As I got up and got my coffee and my sweater and sat and thought a little bit more about the podcast before I started recording, I closed my eyes, like I do every morning, and got into the vision of the life that I would love, of the vision that I've been creating and working on, and I realized this part of my vision getting up early, having coffee, preparing to record my podcast. I love that because that's what today's podcast is about. It's about being a visionary, and this was a perfect example of what happens when you are a visionary. You start living in your vision and it starts to happen, and sometimes it happens when you don't even realize it's all happened, and then just a moment occurs, and you realize oh, this is part of my vision.

That happened to me back in July when I did my first in-person vision workshop. My son was there helping me with the check-in and kind of the setting up of the room, and then he also helped me with journaling exercises that we do, where we use a timer and play this really nice journaling music and my son was helping me with that.

And then one of the times, he would say 15 seconds, or he'd say 30 seconds, 15 seconds, and then he would say that's time and turn off the music and then I would get back into the next part of the workshop. And one of the times that we did that, you know, we stopped the journaling and then I started speaking again on the topic and I looked up and I saw this group of women in this workshop. I saw my son at the back of the room, and it hit me. This is my vision.

In my vision I had myself standing up in a room leading a workshop. In my vision I have my children helping me with events because I want our whole family to be involved in my new business of being a coach and a speaker. And it was happening. It was happening in that moment, and I didn't even really plan for it. That was my vision. And then it all just kind of happened. And then I was well, it didn't just happen, I made it happen, but had the workshop and then my son was there, but I didn't realize that bringing my son there and sort of explaining what I wanted him to do, it didn't all really hit that this was my vision until I was in it. And that's how this works you have the vision and then you go about setting the goals within the vision and achieving them and it all comes together. And that's how it was for me.

In that moment, I just had this feeling of this is it. I've arrived, I'm in the vision, so, and then it happened again this morning. So, the reason I tell you all of that is that this is just how it works, and so I want to explain how to be a visionary because it's so important to create this life that you would love living to be your best self, to create your best self. And I love being a coach and a speaker so much because this is what I wished that I'd had so many years ago when I was putting it all together, of living into my vision. And this is what I help my clients with to create their vision and to create the life that they love. To wake up in the morning saying I love my life. And I've been thinking a lot lately about what the most important thing is in creating results in your life and creating this dream come true life.

And if I had to pick one concept, one teaching that I have, that I've been talking about in the podcast we'll continue to talk about, and what I share with my clients. And if I had to summarize one thing, it would be being a visionary. It's one of the concepts, of the skills that is required. You have to master this skill of being a visionary woman. There is no other way to create the vision, this big life, this version of yourself that you know is meant for you. You have to become a visionary woman, and Google says that a visionary is someone who has the courage to take risks and the strength to endure uncertainty.

They would rather fail trying than not to try at all. Visionary leaders recognize the value and failure in that it can test a team's resilience and ability to move on and grow, being collaborative and communicative. So that definition really was around being a visionary in business. I believe any concept that's used in leadership and productivity and improvement and team management, collaboration all of the concepts in sort of the corporate business world can absolutely be applied to us in our personal life, maybe entrepreneurship endeavors that we're going after. It's all the same. It's about leadership, it's about self-leadership and it's about being a visionary.

So, in this definition that Google says, it talks about having courage and strength to endure uncertainty and that's really about fear, and next week's episode I'll be talking all about befriending your fear because that is part of being a visionary. But for today, we're going to focus on being a visionary and how to be a visionary requires two things: having a vision and then using vision-driven thinking.

I've talked a lot about the power of vision and how the visioning process works in previous episodes, so if you haven't listened to those, you might want to go back and listen to them. So, episode 24, which was just a few episodes back, called The Power of Vision. I take you through the process of creating a vision. And then in episode 3, way back, one of my first episodes is called How to Program Your Success GPS and I love the metaphor of a GPS for programming our life, our vision, because you have to know where you are and you have to know where you're going, and where you're going—that is your vision. So those are two really good episodes that you might want to go back and listen to.

So, the main point in creating your vision, in being a visionary, is asking yourself the question, what would I love? which I've talked about so many times in the podcast because it's such a powerful question and everything comes from that what would I love? Not what would I like or what I should do, or what I think I'm good at or what other people think I should do, but what would I love? And then, when you ask that question and answer it, we want to suspend the how are we going to do it? Or if we could do it. We suspend all of that and we just focus on what would I love. And then we focus on the what is in the vision, what would I love? And that is a requirement. You must have a vision and you must use vision-driven thinking, and that's what I want to talk about.

Next is really how to use what is vision-driven thinking and how to use it. So, it's actually a skill that you must develop. It doesn't come naturally to most of us, and this is something that I have to remind myself daily, and it definitely is one of the areas that I help my clients with, because it's often hard for us to notice when we are doing this, when we're not being vision driven thinking. But you can develop the skill and the more you practice it, the easier it will be, and it will become more habitual to you.

So, there are two ways of thinking. One way is condition-based thinking and the other is vision-driven thinking, and this is where most people get off track, and this is what I learned from my mentor and coach, Mary Morrissey, and I also learned this as part of my certification process at The Life Coach School. And it's all about your thinking, which we've talked about in almost every episode. This is more of a new sort of framework on how to think about it, and this is what I use in my Dream Builder coaching program that I'm certified to coach in.

Oh, and that's another thing about my vision to have group coaching programs where I help women create their dream come true life. In my Dream Builder program and you know what? I just realized this just this minute my first group starts today. See, another thing in my vision, it just all starts to come together. All right back to what I was talking about.

So, you need to notice what frame your thinking is in. When, as you go about your day, as you go about pursuing your big dreams and goals, creating the vision of the life you would love, you have to notice your thinking. You have to notice what you're thinking and noticing what you're focusing on. So conditioned-based thinking is when we look to the situations, the circumstances, and the conditions of our current life for permission for your dreams, for what's possible for you, for what you can be, do and have, using your current circumstances and the results in your current life or in your past as evidence that our dreams are not possible for us or the limitations of what is possible for us.

And some of that comes back to our thinking and our interpretation of our life. Sometimes it's saying why we can't do something or why now is not the right time. So, things like I don't have enough money, I don't have enough time, I don't know how to get started, I need more information or more training. These are all based on conditions and your thinking.

So, when you use your conditions, when you use your circumstances to determine what you can do or what's possible for you, you are being in conditioned-based thinking and usually it has a feeling of contraction, of limitation, of turning inwards. I don't know how to explain it for me. I feel it kind of in my stomach. It's kind of like a contraction on the other side of it, vision-driven thinking, is courageously thinking and living from a vision regardless of circumstances or conditions, being willing to be uncomfortable in the service of your dream.

I love this quote. It's one of my favorite quotes from Brooke Castillo and it's this: Discomfort is the currency of your dreams, and discomfort requires this vision-driven thinking. Deciding for your dream without knowing the how, befriending your fear, knowing it's along for the ride and it feeling expansive.

So, when you really get into your vision, when you think about your dreams and your goals, it feels expansive. You're stepping into what's possible, imagining this future where you are being the woman that you are dreaming of being, where you're doing what you want to do, where you're having what you want to have. That it comes from vision-driven thinking.

But throughout the day we go back and forth between vision-driven and condition-based thinking. So, condition-based is always based on our current circumstances, our current life, our current situations and basically and I love this concept of that's what gives you permission on what's possible for you. And that's this big distinction between being condition-based thinking and being vision-driven thinking. When you're vision-driven, you're not looking for permission from a person, from your circumstances, from anything outside of yourself about what's possible for you, about if you can do it or not. None of that is outside of you. It's inside of you, your vision is inside of you and that's your thinking. And that's why it's so important to be in vision-driven thinking. And this can happen moment by moment throughout your day, when you notice that you're feeling contraction, when you're noticing that you're feeling fear, when you notice that you're feeling shut down around your vision like this is what would happen to me a couple of years ago, when I was having a really challenging time in my life in 2021 and 2022.

There would be times in the day where I would say there is no way that I can create this life that I'm dreaming of. It's just how hard this is right now. There's no way that this is possible for me. And then I would notice that that's being condition-driven. That's basically looking to my certain specific circumstances and conditions to give myself permission of what's possible, and it took a lot of discipline and skill and resilience, to keep reminding myself over and over and over again that what I'm dreaming of, that, what my vision is and a lot of that was about my family and my children and what's possible for all of us I have to just keep going back to my vision.

Keep going back to my vision, and sometimes it would take days, maybe even sometimes weeks, to notice that I was all caught up in my condition-based thinking and I hadn't spent time in my vision. So that's why it's such a skill and skills come from repetition and practice and that's why this is something that you want to do throughout your day to develop the skill. And the more that you practice this and develop it, the better you will get at it, because remember what I've said in many past episodes, and you'll continue to hear this from me, and most recently in last week's episode, or two weeks ago in the episode called the Results Formula, and it's this - your thoughts, whether they're condition-based thoughts or vision-driven thoughts, will create results, not maybe absolutely, either by design, coming from your vision, or by default, based on your current circumstances, situations or conditions.

So, as a visionary woman, it's up to you to be a visionary woman. You have to develop the skill of vision-driven thinking. And you can do this first by noticing how you're feeling. Are you feeling contraction or are you feeling expansion? Are you feeling fear, doubt, worry, anxiety, overwhelm? These are all fear-based, these are all condition-based, pulling away, shutting down, telling yourself that now's not the right time, telling yourself that your vision, your goals, or dreams are not possible for you because of all the things outside of you, in your circumstances, in your situations and conditions. That is all contraction and that is all condition-based thinking.

To be a visionary, to be a vision-driven woman, you have to use vision-driven thinking and move from contraction to expansion. You have to spend time in your vision, you have to have a vision, you have to believe that it's possible for you without any evidence. And that's what it means to be a visionary because you're visioning something that you don't have. Think about the Wright Brothers, who invented the airplane. They had a vision that they could create this mechanical thing that could fly in the air, and everyone said that it was impossible. But they had a vision, and they believe that if you have a vision, that it is possible and I can, you know, we can all think of so many other examples of visionaries that have created things in the world. It's the same concept of creating, you know, big things in the world, like putting a man on the moon, creating an airplane, or creating the best life that you can imagine. It's all the same. It's all about being a visionary and using vision-driven thinking.

Wallace Wattles says in The Science of Getting Rich, in chapter four, the first principle in the science of getting rich is this there are the facts of our life, the outer circumstances of our life, and then there is the truth. The facts might be that you have not achieved your dreams and goals in your life, but the truth is that you are far more powerful than any circumstance, condition or scenario in your current situation and this is in the book I'm quoting, I have said that men get rich by doing things in a certain way, and in order to do so, men must become able to think in a certain way. This next sentence is emphasized in italics in the book A man's way of doing things is the direct result of the way he thinks about things. To do things in the way you want to do them, you will have to acquire the ability to think the way you want to think. This is the first step toward getting rich.

Again, this next sentence is italics … It's to stress the importance of it. To think what you want to think is to think truth regardless of appearances. And I will add here that that is what I mean by being vision-driven. To use vision-driven thinking is to think truth. The truth is your vision, regardless of appearances. Condition-based thinking is the status quo. It's looking to your outer circumstances and conditions for the life that you can have, for permission to get what you want.

And he goes on to say: every man has the natural and inherent power to think what he wants to think, but it requires far more effort to do so than it does to think the thoughts which are suggested by appearances. To think according to appearances is easy. To think truth regardless of appearances is laborious and requires the expenditure of more power than any other work man is called upon to perform.

And this is my favorite line: There is no labor from which most people shrink as they do from that of sustained and consecutive thought. It's the hardest work in the world, and this is especially true when truth is contrary to appearances. Every appearance in the visible world tends to produce a corresponding form in the mind which observes it. And this can only be prevented by holding the thought of the truth.

And then the chapter ends with this … there is a thinking stuff from which all things are made and which, in its original state, permeates, penetrates, and fills the inner spaces of the universe. A thought in this substance produces the thing that is imagined by the thought. Man can form things in his thought and by impressing his thought upon formless substance can cause the thing he thinks about to be created. Do not ask why these things are true, nor speculate as to how they can be true. Simply take them on trust.

The science of getting rich begins with the absolute acceptance of this faith, and that's what I want for you, for me, for all of us, is to take this faith of this is how it works to be a visionary, to use vision-driven thinking. To use vision-driven thinking is that to believe that to have a vision, to believe in that vision, to believe it's possible for you and to believe that that is the truth, regardless of your outside circumstances. And, as Wallace Wattlles says, that's the hardest work in the world and most people won't do it, but you can, and I want encourage you to do it, because that is how we change and that is how we create our vision.

And I know that, if you're listening to this podcast, you are a visionary, you want to be vision-driven, you have a dream, you have a vision, or, if you don't, you're starting to create one as listening to this podcast. And this is the skill that you must have, that you must develop, because you are a vision-driven woman, and you are a success-minded woman, and you can do it. I believe in you. Your dreams are meant for you, and you have the capability, the possibility, and the capacity to create the life you are imagining.

I love you. I believe in you and I'm so glad you're here and I'll talk to you next week. Bye.

Thanks for joining me this week on the Success Minded Woman podcast. If you like what you heard on the podcast, and you want to know more, then head on over to www.thedreamacademy.com where you can sign up for my weekly success and mindset tips to help you create your dream come true life. Talk to you all next week. Bye.