3 Tips to Create Your Wider Vision
February 26th
In our first episode of Embrace Your In-Between, we will be exploring how to create your wider vision for 2023 in a way that feels motivating, nourishing, and expansive.
Megan Shekleton, our host and Certified Transformational Life Coach, will be sharing 3 mindset shifts that you can apply today to ensure that you are designing your new year from a place of intentionality and self love.
In this episode, we connect on:
01:30 | Challenging the new year, new you rhetoric
03:00 | Approaching growth from the lens of self love
06:30 | Analyzing and creating are different processes
07:30 | How to suspend the how when casting your vision
08:30 | Why it’s important to not create your vision based off the past
09:30 | Danielle LaPorte + The Desire Map
10:00 | How to anchor into the identity of your vision
11:30 | Journal prompts for getting clear on the next-level future you
12:30 | Allowing your WHY to motivate you forward
14:30 | Reframing discipline as devotion
Transcript
Hi there. Welcome to Embrace Your In-Between by Wider Visions. I am your host Megan Shekleton a certified transformational life coach and the founder of Wider Visions. At Wider Visions. Our mission is to support your growth and expansion into the wider vision of your life. We are a platform where you can go to grow and we offer coaching courses and community to help you expand into who you'd like to be and the life you'd like.
On this podcast, we engage in real conversations and share actionable growth guidance to help you embrace your in-between this space, between where you are today and where you want to be. Because after all, in the in-between is where all the growth happens.
Hi y'all. I am so excited. It is our first episode of Embrace Your In-Between by Wider Visions New Year new podcast. Today we will be exploring how to create your wider vision for 2023 in a way that feels motivating. Nourishing and expansive, and I will be sharing three mindset shifts that you can apply today to ensure that you're designing your new year from a place of intentionality, clarity, and self-love.
so much of this new year. New you rhetoric that emerges during this time of year can position growth from a place of not enoughness. There can feel like this pressure to map out your entire year, set really aggressive goals and have complete clarity over what you want this next year to be about and what you want this next year to unfold.
And there's this inherent focus on achieving and doing. I n connecting with my one-on-one coaching clients this time of year really brings up a wide range of emotions. There can feel like this massive pressure, the need for the clarity and the how, a fear of allowing yourself to dream about this next year for the fear that you might be disappointed or you might not achieve it.
And then on the flip side, some of my clients feel like it's really fun because it's this natural moment to be. Reflective and really think about what you wanna manifest and call in. It can feel like a fresh start, a new beginning, a spark to take new aligned action. And so depending on what season of your life you're in, you might feel a little bit different about this time of year, and that's okay.
Oftentimes, There's expectations around how we should feel, and if they're not matching up with our real experience, those expectations in our current reality, we end up having feelings about our feelings and feeling disappointed that our expectations are not being met.
So just let yourself off the hook sometimes within the self-improvement. It can really be weaponized to make you feel like you're not enough and that you need to change in order to be more worthy. And I wanna make it abundantly clear that you are inherently worthy, valuable, and enough just the way you.
I really believe that we come to earth in this human playground to grow. I think this human experience is all meant to be about soul growth and really expanding ourselves, growing, healing, and in this exact moment, you are enough. Both can be true. We can have this inherent desire to grow and expand, and you don't need to change anything about yourself to be worthy and whole.
And so at wider visions, we approach growth from a place of self-love, self-worth. Personally for me, I love a new year. I love my birthday. I love a new month. I am really reflective by nature. It's the Scorpio sun and cancer arising in me. I have a lot of water, and so for me, I love natural moments to tune in, reflect and refine my wider vision.
I really believe that the beginning of the year shouldn't be the one time that we really spend.
Honing in on our visions, honing in on our desires, honing in on the shifts we wanna make in our life. It should be a continuous practice. It should be something that we're continuously checking in with ourselves and really getting clear on where we are today and where we wanna be, and how we can close that gap in the most loving way possible any day and every moment.
Is an opportunity to practice self-awareness around where we wanna go, where we are, and what are some initial mindset shifts and action steps we can take to bridge that gap. In 2023, we will be launching our membership, which will offer coaching courses and community to help you expand into the wider vision of your life.
And within the course component of the membership, we're gonna be teaching the expansion process, which is a four-part formula to help you grow into your wider vision. So in that course we'll be teaching how to get clarity and map out your wider vision. Support you in shifting your mindset through subconscious, cognitive and somatic tools, and then start taking aligned and inspired action through habit tracking, goal setting, compounding action, and accountability.
Our process really blends neuroscience, psychology, mindset, spirituality, and energetics to create this really integrated approach to. And I wanna give you a little bit of insight around some of the tips that I share in that course. And so the three tools that I'm gonna be sharing today have really transformed my approach to vision setting and goal setting, and also my client's approach to it as well.
The first tip is to suspend the how. There's this amazing quote that I first heard from my Kundalini meditation teacher, Desiree of Benin, and it goes, don't try to create and analyze at the same time. They're different processes. Wow. Right. How often do we try to create and analyze at the exact same time or the second we allow ourselves to start to create and come up with a new vision.
we start to analyze about the how.
Many times when I'm kicking off a new coaching container with a new client, we start exploring their vision and I typically hear something along the lines of, I really wanna do X, but I don't know how I wanna start my own purpose-driven business, but I don't even know how to start.
I don't even know where to start. I don't know how to do that. I wanna build more meaningful connections but I don't know how to find these people. I wanna feel happier, but I don't know how. And so what I always say in that moment is let's suspend the how. Let's let go of needing to know the answer or the perfectly laid plan that will get you from point A to point Z.
The answers and the plan and the clarity will always come. But if we don't allow ourselves to explore, imagine, visualize, and clarify our soul led desires, because we're so afraid of not knowing how we're gonna do it, then we really aren't allowing ourselves the space to really tune into where we wanna expand and where we wanna grow.
We start limiting our. We start limiting ourselves to what we think is believable versus what's possible. A lot of times when we go straight to the how is because we don't really feel safe to dream for many of us. We assume that our future will look like our past. We set our goals and our dreams based off of our past.
And if that's the case, we're really limiting ourselves. A really juicy, expansive, wider vision should feel like a stretch. And so if you're finding yourself really jumping to the how when setting out this vision, a journal prompt, I really love for this is if I knew the answer was yes, what would I ask the universe for if I knew the answer was?
what would I ask the universe for? If I knew anything was truly possible for me, what desire would I claim?
So give yourself permission to dream, suspend the how, and really map out that juicy vision, the second tool. That's really transformative in helping you set out that vision is focus on how you wanna feel. Danielle LaPorte in the Desire Map, which is an amazing book, go Get. It says You're not chasing the goal itself.
You're actually chasing the feeling that you hope you will achieve. Once you have that,
goal how eye-opening is this? Whenever we're picturing what we want to experience, it's because we're also picturing and imagining the version of ourselves, the feelings that we would be feeling, the identity that we wanna have. And so truly, it's less about the goal itself or that destination itself, and it's more we're chasing the desire.
Of how we think. Having that thing would make us feel when we say we want this new career or new relationship or new milestone. We are also subconsciously imagining how we will feel once we have that thing we're imagining the version of ourselves that we would be embodying when we reach that big destination.
And so what I love to do with my clients is once they've allowed themselves to dream a little, we start to get clear on what identity that vision unlocks for them. And once we have a deeper understanding of the identity and the feelings that my client would be experiencing when they reach this milestone.
We can start to consciously move towards being that version now. A few questions to help you unlock this identity, unlock this feeling that you're chasing with the goals that you're setting for yourself are, when I achieve my vision, what emotions would I be feeling on a daily basis?
what would this version of you be doing more of? What would this version of you be doing less of
when you reach this goal, this vision, this destination? How would you feel in your body? How would you carry yourself? How is it different from how you feel in your body now?
And then lastly, what beliefs, characteristics, and habits would this version of you be embodying on a daily basis?
And so when you really start to uncover the identity of you that you wanna be, that this dream, this soul led desire is leading you to. , then you have the clarity to start cultivating those beliefs, those characteristics, those habits, those feelings that you would feel once you reach the destination, but instead start to embody them in the journey.
My last tip is around discipline.
and really reframing discipline to be connected to your why. Discipline and motivation will really only get us so far when we're moving towards really big audacious dreams and goals. And it's your why and your purpose that really is gonna propel you forward when they start to dwindle. Motivation will only take you so far. What will really propel you forward in those moments where you don't feel like going or you wanna, it's easier to revert back to old habits or old ways of being, or old ways of thinking is your why.
Why is this meaningful to you? Why is this shift important to you?
I actually have a really complicated relationship to discipline. I like to say that I am a recovering perfectionist. I think I first heard the term from Bene Brown and it has stuck, but I am someone who. Used to really hold myself to an impossible standard, and I was so critical of myself. I was so disciplined because I never wanted to make a mistake.
And so for me, when I am. Moving towards a vision and wanting to take aligned to action. It's so rooted in the practice of self-care and self-love, and really how can I be journey focused versus destination focused? And for me, it's all about embracing that in between how can I set the intention to enjoy the now as much as when I reach that destination?
None of this is to say that my vision at times doesn't require effort or stretching or the discomfort that comes when you're growing, but also if I'm anchoring into my why, it really serves as a bigger purpose behind my efforts. This week on Instagram, I came across a post from Piera, who was one of the co-founders of Refinery 29, and she posted about a reframe around discipline that really helped me kind of shift my relationship to it.
And it said, I think discipline is one of the most beautiful words in the English language as it comes from the word discipl. Which asks you to question what are you devoted to, and if you're devoted to things that really matter to you, you can rethink discipline as this soft dance where you are explaining to the universe every time you put energy and work to something that it is something that's really important to your soul.
I love that. So beautiful. As you start to take massive action towards these visions, instead of using discipline as a way to self harm or tell you you're not enough strong, arm you into your visions, how can you anchor into your why?
What about this vision is meaningful to you? , why do you think your soul is leading you in this direction? Why do you wanna grow in this direction?
Inner Reflection Kit
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