4 things that help you create your life vision

You are listening to episode number 7. Thank you so much for joining us today. My goal with these conversations is to explore different types of people and their successes as well as their failures in navigating and mapping out their lives so that you too may have more insight in what it takes to build the life that you envision for yourself. I believe if you take action each day, the life that you want can be closer than you think. Welcome to Work That Out, guys, your guide to connecting authentically, living with purpose, and having no regrets. This is the show that gives you real stories and real examples of people working it out and creating the life that they want. Today, this is the start of sort of like a series that I'm doing on the podcast I want to provide you guys with more value. I want to help you get ahead as much as I possibly can because I feel like my life has been changed. I mean, inside out, based on the things that I've learned in the work that I've been doing. So today, to start off this journey, I want to talk about having a vision. For your life. Okay, now when you were younger, we all dreamt about doing certain things as a kid. We all dreamt about doing certain things as a teenager because we thought anything was possible then. We thought that we could have anything that we could dream of. Well, then life got in the way, right? Life got in the way, and then we became victims of our circumstances. We became limited believers in our own ability based on various things that happen. And I know I, for one, lost my ability to dream and to dream big for a very, very long time. I remember when I was graduating from high school— that was a minute ago— but I remember I was graduating from high school, I had no idea what I wanted to do. I didn't have the mindset to know that I needed to take care of certain things and I needed to have clarity in where it was I wanted to go, that it couldn't be vague. All I knew back then was, oh, I enjoyed theater, I want to perform with something, I just, you know, and then, and make some money, you know, and to where I can live a comfortable life. Well, that's vague as hell, right? And I did not have the fortitude to put forth an exact plan. And so as I got older, you know what happens? Life gets in the way. You start getting commitments. You start, you know, you start working and you start accumulating bills that now working is no longer an option. Really chasing your dream seems harder than it ever had, right? And so we get off task and we get off of the path of dreaming. And then before you look, that dream gets further and further and further away. And it took me a long time to get back on that path because it's easy. It's easy to just sort of go with the flow. It's easy to fit in, you know. And if you're not hanging around with, with people who are aspiring to be more than you are right now, where you're the weakest person in the room and all you can do is grow and improve from all all of the talent, all of the motivation, all of the inspiration that's around you, that's just gonna make you even better, right? Because we know if you're training for the Olympics and you want to get faster, let's say you're a sprinter, running and racing against people that you know you can beat is not going to make you any better. But what will? Getting on the track with people you know are gonna smoke you, people you know you can't beat. And you may never beat those people, but we know that you're going to get better. So the same thing applies with, with your life. If there are these dreams that you want, the same thing applies. And you got to hang around with people who are dreaming. You got to hang around with people who are making it happen. And I know that's easier said than done because we all are comfortable, we are relaxed when it's, when it's— we're talking about hanging Oh, that's my homie. Oh, that's my friend. That doesn't mean you can't continue to be friends, but let's think about your circle of influence, right? So the most important question right now, because we all have a tendency to think that we have a lot of time, when nobody knows how much time they have. Nobody knows how much time they have left on this earth. For all we know, today is anyone's last day. You know. But let's say you ask yourself a question. If you knew without a doubt, for some reason you knew that you were predestined, that you only had 2 more years to live on this Earth, what would be different? What would you do differently today? Would you still be doing the exact same things that you're doing today? Would you still be going through your day kind of allowing things to kind of come at you and you just being reactive? Or would you be proactive? Would you work like hell to create the life that you've always wanted? That life that you put on the back burner, that life that for some reason other things became more important, that life that you no longer think you can have. But what happens when you push yourself up into that corner and you're like, I don't want to have any regrets at the end of 2 years, I don't want to have any regrets. So a question that I always ask myself right now, and I wish this was a question I asked myself like when I was deciding what do I want to be when I grow up, was do I want to spend my life living to work? You know, getting up, it's all about work, I don't even enjoy my life because it's all about work. Or do I spend my life working so that I can live, right? Because most of us have to have some type of income, a means to an end. But when that job becomes your priority, your majority of the time that you're spending, then how are we living? It's so important that we connect with other people. We were put on this earth to connect with other people, not to just be ho— held up in some office, not to just be selfish. We were put on this earth to connect and to help and to love each other every single day, right? And so that's, again, that's what this is about, because I know that it is in my mission, is a part of my life that I want to help. I want to give value to the people in my life. I want to give value to the people who, you know, give me your time. You can't ever get time back. Time is a precious gift. So the fact that those of you who are listening right now, I want to give you value in every episode, right? So let's talk about some steps that you can do. 'Cause we're still on that great vision, right? I want you to go back to dreaming like a kid, right? I'm a huge proponent of journaling, but before you start journaling, if you really closed your eyes and you asked yourself, what does my perfect day look like? What am I doing in that perfect day? If I didn't have to go to work, if, if every day felt like it was a vacation, what does my perfect day look like? Right? What are the things that I'm implementing in that perfect day? And those are the things that we're working on today. Well, then once you take some time— and, and this is— and I'm going really, really quick right now because again, these are things that you can do when you have more time. I would spend at least 5 or 10 minutes visualizing what my perfect day is, not according to anybody else's rules, but according to the things that make me happy, the things that I'm excited excited to get up, get up every single day and do. Because so many people are like, ah, shit, it's Monday, I don't want to go to work. Well, you know what, if we reframe that and we put something right before work that we love to do, and we considered work as a means to getting the life that we want, you might have a different attitude when you wake up on Monday. So the first step, journaling your perfect day, establishing how you want to spend your day every single day. Now, in order to find that gap Step number 2, I want you to now again go back to your journal, go back to your visualization, maybe even a little meditation, you know, if you're a meditator. And I want you to think 20 years from now. And 20 years from now, I want you to almost rise above the house that you're living in. Who's in that house with you? What's in the driveway? Is there a driveway? Are you there in that house by yourself? Are you surrounded with a spouse? Are you surrounded by kids? Is it all of the furniture you've always wanted? Is your house dirty? Is it clean? Is it the life that you've imagined for yourself? Now we figure out— you have your journal, perfect day, step 1. And then you have step 2, you visualize where you want to go here, right? Right. Step 3, we've now determined how wide that gap is. Maybe that gap isn't so wide for you, but maybe that gap is really, really wide for a lot of people, right? So we can't just dream about it, you know. What are the skills? Step 3, what are the skills that you need to start working on today in order to become that person who can have those things, right? So that's taking action. That's not just continually thinking about it. That is taking action. Because I'm a firm believer that with enough time, anybody can learn anything. Like, if you don't put yourself up against, you know, you've got some deadline, you've got to learn it in 3 weeks or whatever— when you want something bad enough, anybody can learn anything, right? With enough time, you can do that. And so just imagine, we have that gap. You know what the gap is, you know the life that you want to live. Now what's it going to look like? What's your life going to look like if you don't take action? If you're still dreaming the same dream today, but you haven't done a single thing to get closer to that 20-year dream, right? To that grand vision that you have for your life, you haven't done one single thing. What is the thing that could be holding you back? Is it procrastination? Is it that you don't know a big enough why? Is it just that you don't know how to take action? Well, something that holds people back is not being clear enough. Yeah, you can know, you can want to know the house you're going to live in, you can want to know all these people who are going to be in the house, or, or maybe it's just you. But you have to get clarity, clarity on the exact goals. Like, what kind of house is it? What is the job that I'm going to acquire skills that's going to enable me to have this life that I want to have, right? This, this, this, this dream, this vision that I see for myself, right? So you're going to acquire those skills again because anybody can learn anything. If you have a big enough why to do it. And then the next step, I mentioned it a little earlier, you cannot be a person who have all these big dreams and big visions and you're surrounding yourself with negative Nancys, right? People who don't want to see you do anything, people who don't want you to do anything better than what they're doing, people who will look down on you and go, oh, what you think, what I have is not good enough? And you're going to hear all kinds of shit like that because people are always like, you know, oh, she thinks she's better than us. No, get it in your mind that you have a dream, and it doesn't matter what your friend, your family, your parents, your mother, your father, your girlfriend, your boyfriend, whoever— it doesn't matter what they say. No matter what, you have a vision for your life, because at the end of life you want to have no regrets. So surround yourself with people who are going to empower you people who will inspire you, people who will uplift you, and people who will motivate you to become the best version of yourself that you can possibly be. And then the final thing is you have to believe that you can do this, continually focusing on that goal, right? Here's today. Here is the end zone. And it's not the end zone of life, it's where you want to be in 10 years, 20 years, right? And we're going to close that gap by acquiring the skills that you need, right? By surrounding yourself with those people, by having a clear vision so that that goal is more easily attainable. And what's so great about that is you just don't want to have any regrets. I remember before my mom passed, she lived a long life. My mom lived to be 85 years old. And you know, it's funny to think, you know, because part of the joke was, you know, I remember like the people in the neighborhood would say, ah, you know, she's like, she's a curmudgeon. She's like screwed, you know, because She was honoring crotchety, but you know what? She was also very, very funny. She knew what she wanted and she knew how to take care of things. But my mother was someone who didn't really have a grand vision for her life. You know why? Because she didn't know how to dream big like that. And about 6 months before she passed, I asked her, "Mom, what are you the most proud of in your whole life?" And my mom was always someone who didn't enjoy all this small talk. She don't wanna answer these questions, so she would say, "Here you go again, asking me all those stupid-ass questions. What are you asking me that stuff for?" And it was just because I'm interested in those things and I wanted to know my mother on a deeper level. And so when we finally cut through that chatter, she finally said, "I don't know what I'm proud of. I guess raising y'all, you 5 monkeys." That sounds really racist today, right? But that was her sense of humor. It was a Black mother to Black children, right? So she didn't mean anything racist. By it, but that was just her sense of humor. And so when I think back on that conversation, do I think my mother is proud of her life? Yes, I do. Do I think that she regrets things? Yes, I do. But I don't know that for sure. Those are my interpretations. Those are my perspec— my perspectives on her life. And so what I want for you and for me is to not have those regrets at the end of life. If you had to look back and you heard, you know, the things that people were going to say about you, are you proud of that life? Are you proud of the action that you have taken every single day? So ask yourself every day, are the things that I'm doing today, tomorrow, and next week— are those things getting me closer to the life that I want to live, or are they just keeping me stagnant and stuck, or pulling me further away? All right, guys, thank you so much for listening. If you want to know more about what I'm up to, head over to traviesteward.com. If you like seeing the videos of the podcast, every episode is on my YouTube channel. And if you like what you hear, please do me a favor and subscribe to the show. And remember, life is about connecting authentically, living with purpose, and having no regrets.