Your 1 Thing and Dreaming for Vision 2020

Hello, and welcome to episode number 17 of The Strategy Corner where our goal is to get you to take action. I’m your host, Michelle Zink, the owner of Intentional Solutions Corp. On today’s episode, we’re going to be talking about your one thing in dreaming for vision 2020. Remember, all of December is devoted to helping you, my listener, plan and dream and develop your plan for 2020. We took a look back last week at 2019. Excuse me, two weeks ago we looked back at 2019, and last week we had you answer the fundamental questions to begin the 2020 vision. All of the weeks will build upon each other and at the end, you will have a clear vision of what you want to accomplish and create in 2020, a path to your unique success.

We’re going to start today by talking about your one thing. I first learned about the one thing concept by reading Gary Keller’s book titled The One Thing. At the time, I didn’t have one thing. I understood the concept intellectually but didn’t get how it could pertain to my life as a whole. Then you skip ahead a few years, maybe five, and recently I heard a podcast by Brooke Castillo, an older one, talking about the one thing on her podcast, and this time when I heard her talk about it, it really resonated with me and made sense. What she said was is that if you have a one thing, the one thing, that will make everything else irrelevant or unnecessary. Now for me in the past, I’ve had several things that I wanted to do at one time. I’ve wanted to lose weight. I’ve wanted to build a business. I’ve wanted to be a great wife, a great mom, a great daughter, all of these things at one time. What I’ve realized and know is that when you’re spraying, when you have so many things that you’re focused on, you can’t do any of them really well. You could do all of them pretty good, but if you really wanted to do things really well, you can’t do that.

So I’ve been playing with and thinking about constraint in the rest of 2019 and into 2020 and what that would look like. So when I heard about this one thing, it made me realize that I need to focus in and truly get to that one thing; the one thing that would make everything else irrelevant or unnecessary. So, I ask you, when I think and when I say the one thing that will make everything else you relevant or unnecessary, do you have one thing that bubbles up for you? I’m going to give you a few minutes just to think about it. Is there one thing that you know if you focused on that, everything else would fall into alignment?

Let me give you an example for me and what the revolution was personally. Like I shared, I’ve been thinking about, I’ve always had goals and objectives for my life and I’ve always had a lot of things that I wanted to do. And in the past, I’ve gotten success, but it’s been good success, but not great success. And now when I have a business that I’m trying to grow, I’m also again trying to be a great mom, a great wife. I’d love to lose some weight. Just being honest. All of those things seem very important, but the problem is that to do any of those really well, it takes a lot of energy. So where this really has become an alignment for me is I realized that if I really just had one thing, then all the other things that I really wanted to do would become an alignment because to do that one thing really well, I would have to make sure that the other things were going well also.

I always talk about the personal and the professional life and how back in the good old days, they were very separate. But now in today’s day and age, if you don’t have a good personal life or if your personal life isn’t in alignment with who you are and what you want to be, then your professional life won’t be either. So when I really thought deeply about, well, my main goal is to grow my business, but in order for me to grow my business, I need to make sure that I am living a true life for myself, which would be that I’m spending time with my family, which would mean that I’m spending time with my daughter, which would mean that I’m spending time with friends.

So, what I really thought deeply about this whole concept about one thing and really took some time to think about what would my one thing be that would make everything else irrelevant or unnecessary, I landed on the business concept; the concept of building my business. Because to do that, I would need to make sure that I ate really well so that my brain was fully functioning and that I was energized and had the ability to focus when I’m working with clients. I would need to set time with my family because I know that that recharges me and I know that based off of doing my 20% of the things that give me 80% of my happiness. I realized that connections with family and friends is really important and so I know that in order to be and grow my business, I would need to focus on those relationships.

I also was starting to think about an NFL player, Tom Brady. I know it sounds crazy, but I’ve been really thinking about how at the age of 40, maybe four, how he has become this amazing or is, was, will always be an amazing quarterback and how he has to get himself prepared for the game every week in order to keep his mind sharp. I know there’s all these things out there that say that he doesn’t eat strawberries and he doesn’t eat certain things, but it really does make sense when you think about it. To be the best at anything, you kind of got to do things that seem a little bit out of the ordinary to the average person, because in order to prepare yourself to rise to that such level in a way that you want to, right? We can always rise to a level with taking shortcuts. You know, cutting our hours of sleep, with just eating whatever is around. But then are you really doing it in a way that you can sustain

Because that’s the thing too. I want to build a business that’s sustainable that I can grow and build and maybe my daughter would want to take over one day. And to do that, I can’t have tremendous growth in one year. I need to slow down and really focus on who are my people and how do I really truly want to serve them? To do that, I need to have the mind capacity and the healthy body in order to have that level of success as well. So, when you really slow down and think about growing something that’s sustainable, you need to consider your sleep, your food, your emotional intelligence, who you’re spending time with, are you doing things that you love?

So, for me, when I finally heard it this year, I realized this one thing concept is truly amazing and I can see the benefits of doing the one thing and how that could really affect my life by taking it to the next level. And so, I’m really excited about playing with it this year, and I wanted to make sure that I share this concept with you so that you can start thinking about it and dreaming about it. If you just had one thing in 2019 … excuse me, in 2020 that you’re focusing on, what would be that one thing that would eliminate everything else? That would really truly put you in the right direction to accomplish a lot of other multiple goals that you have for yourself or that you’ve had for yourself for a while, but by focusing on this one thing, it makes all those other things possible.

So, think about it. I know it seems a little bit out there, but just take some time to think about it and see if you do have the one thing, because I know rolling into 2020, I feel much more focused and aligned with who I am and who I want to be because I have this one thing, and I can see how all these other smaller goals and objectives really align with exactly where I want to go in 2020 with my one thing and how it makes me feel more confident and secure that I’m going the right direction. So, if you need to listen to this podcast again to hear what the one thing actually means to me and how I’ve utilized it, do it, because I know it takes a while sometimes to hear something. Because maybe you have something else on your mind right now when you’re listening to this podcast or maybe you’re just not in a place to really think about your one thing.

So, definitely come back. If it’s something that interests you and you don’t have the time to think about it right now, come back and listen again and see if you can come up with your one thing for 2020. Because remember, we’re always managing our energy. I know they say time management, but it truly is energy management. And so, with this podcast and all the ones that I’ve been developing in 2020 for December, all are focusing on that energy and where we should be putting our time and our energy to so this way, we can create that amazing 2020.

Okay, the other thing I wanted to move into, because I talked about in the beginning that today’s strategy was your one thing and dreaming. When I talk about dreaming, I mean, of course we’ve all dreamed as a kid, but I feel like as we grow older, dreaming becomes something that we don’t do on a regular basis. I was reintroduced to dreaming through Marie Forleo and her new book, Everything Is Figureoutable. If you haven’t gotten it, you need to go get the book. I’ve really enjoyed it. I like Marie. She’s from New Jersey, which is where I’m from, and I like the way that she writes. She’s very direct, to the point, and has amazing quotes throughout the whole book.

But the one concept that I really found that I enjoyed was this idea of dreaming. I got the one quote that I read on page one 25 of her book says, “Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we moved towards our dreams, we move towards our divinity.” Okay, I’m going to say that one more time. “Our creative dreams and yearnings come from a divine source. As we move towards our dreams, we move towards our divinity.” Julia Cameron. To me, this quote aligns with exactly what we’ve been talking about over the last couple of weeks and diving into in December. It’s all about creative dreams, yearning, going towards our dreams. We move towards our divinity, really deciding ahead of time and dreaming what we really want to create in our life so we can actually start doing that.

And the one thing that she has here after that is she has an exercise for you to do and this is actually, just in case you have the book, it’s chapter six and it’s define your dream, and on page 133, she has an exercise that I did that I thought was really helpful and I wanted to share. It’s an exercise called list your top one-year dreams and then they have a quote. Again, “A dream is a wish your heart makes.” Cinderella. So, I’m going to go ahead and read to you out of the book the challenge. Here we go. Set a timer for 15 minutes and make a list of the top goals, dreams, or projects you’re most excited to start figuring out within the next year. These can be painful problems you need to solve or aspirations you’re ready to materialize. Write down anything that comes to mind that you’d like to change, start, stop, pursue, heal, transform, learn, experience, explore, become, create or achieve.

It says here, important note. It’s not necessary that you accomplish this dream within the year, but it’s imperative that you’re willing to start now. If you’re clear on exactly what you want to figure out, you can either brainstorm a list of one-year dreams for fun. Your answers might surprise you, or move straight to the next step. If you’re already feeling anxious because you can’t come up with anything, don’t worry. Not knowing what you want is more common than you might think, which is exactly what we’ve been talking about. Some of us have been pleasing others and suppressing our own dreams for so long, we’ve lost touch with our own desires. These questions help. Use as many of these prompts as you like.

So here you go. If you could wave a magic wand and change one thing about your life or the world, what would it be? What breaks your heart about life, work, or the world? There’s a curse here. What pisses you off about life, work, or the world? If you had two extra hours a day, what would you do with that time? Also, another thing that could prompt you is finish this sentence. Wouldn’t it be cool if, dot, dot, dot? So, for me, I went ahead and set the timer for 15 minutes and I truly thought about things that I wanted to create and dream and produce in 2020, and I came from a viewpoint of more personal. It was more about what did I really want to intentionally develop and do in 2020.

And so, here are some things that I came up with, and again, 15 minutes. One thing I had on here was to create a girls’ weekend with my sisters-in-laws. Now we usually do it every year, but being intentional about it and setting it ahead of time, so doing it and planning it in January instead of last minute is something I want to do. I want to go ahead and take my daughter on a girls’ trip to visit my girlfriend, Susan. I want to over-deliver on value to my clients. And what would that look like? So that’s one business thing that I wrote down. I want to go out west summer 2020 with some friends and stop in Park City to see some other friends. I want to plan a progressive dinner once we have some neighbors who are building a house far away or building a house here, but are living farther away. I want to plan a progressive dinner once they moved back into our neighborhood.

I want to stop working at 2:30 on Fridays and do fun things with Millie 50% of the Fridays on the calendar. I want to go to New York next Christmas. I want to write down daily things about Millie in a journal so that I can remember all the fun things that she did and I can pass it onto her. I want to plan two monthly date nights. These are things that just came up for me that make me see what I need to plan on my schedule for 2020 and helps me to see where I want to put my time and energy. When you talk about creating these types of events in 2020, it takes time to do it. One I didn’t talk about was my mom turned 70 this year and I want to take her to the Keys, because she’s always had a dream of going there. So, to plan that trip it really takes some forethought and it takes some time to see when my husband might be gone so that we can plan time to go away the same time. It takes looking at hotels and seeing if we have points.

I mean, all these things take time and if I don’t decide ahead of time the dream about the things that I want to create in 2020, then I’ll never do it. And so this way I’ve got this list that I’ve developed, I’m keeping it in my inbox, and throughout the month of December I’m going to start working down the list and making sure that I start planning these things and I start reaching out. By doing this, funny thing, we just had Thanksgiving at our house last week and my sister-in-law’s and I were already talking about our trip in 2020 and we were brainstorming some ideas. So, I want to go ahead and jump off that and get with them this month to really start thinking of dates and times and where we’re really thinking about so we can start planning. You know, not only planning for the time off, but then also planning how much do things cost? It’s always good to know ahead of time your budget and where you can put your time, your energy. We all have limited resources, so if we can figure out where we need to or want to focus and dream, it helps us to create again that better 2020. So, I hope this exercise is fun for you.

Now it’s your turn. Here are your calls to action this week. Number one, think about what you want to accomplish in 2020. Your big, bold goals, are you setting your sights on? Is there one thing you can put all your energy in that would make everything else irrelevant or unnecessary? So, take 30 minutes and think about this. Is there one thing that you could put all your energy in that would make everything else irrelevant or unnecessary? I say to think about what you want to accomplish in 2020, your big, bold goals because that helps you figure out what’s most important. We also went ahead and decided on those 20% of the things that give us 80% of our results, so your one thing could be personal, it could be professional, that aligns with and takes you to the next level and what you’re looking for.

Then the second thing is I want you to go ahead and set your timer for 15 minutes and dream. Dream about what you would like to change, start, stop, pursue, heal, transform, learn, experience, explore, become, create or achieve. Then ask, “Is there anything else I want to add?” Every time when I’m doing brainstorms, I always ask myself, “Is there anything else?” Because sometimes there’s something else that just pops up. Remember, we are building up here to get to a strategy where 2020 is mapped out. You’re living and creating experiences and wins in business and your personal life that align with your vision, your dreams, your excitement. Taking this time to figure out your stuff is not only a gift to yourself but the ones around you. The more clear we can get on what makes us happy and where we want to spend our time, the easier it is to align with our loved ones and our friends.

But the main thing here is to have fun. Don’t take yourself so seriously when you’re doing these things. Just really let yourself just go and dream. You’re just writing it down. You don’t have to show anybody any of your answers to any of these things. It’s really to create that space to get you thinking outside the box and really deciding ahead of time who you want to be and who you need to be in 2020. Then once you’ve done all this stuff, put your writings aside and just see if anything else pops up. Next week we’re going to be having some final questions and then wrapping up, kind of pulling everything together that we’ve been doing on the next podcast. So, that’s going to be a great one. But for now, everything you’ve put together, just put it to the side, and then if anything comes up during the time between the different podcasts, go back and write things down. If you have a new thought about something, go back and find that piece of paper that you wrote maybe some answers to your questions or your look back on 2019, and just make sure that you add in anything new that comes up.

Okay. Please go to iTunes, Stitcher, Google Play, and subscribe to The Strategy Corner. You can also go to my website, intentionalsolutionscorp.com, and sign up to get my weekly blog post, which also has a link to the latest podcast. Until next time, remember; through action and growth, progression happens. Let’s take action together. Thank you, and create an amazing week.