Nancy: Your vision is not something that needs to be created. The truth is your vision exists within you. It just might be a little dusty, sort of hidden in the dark. We want to bring light to our vision. Your vision is something that excites you, something that you feel passionate about, your desired experience. Your vision becomes the gravitational pull that moves you forward in your life toward whatever it is that you most want.
Nancy: Welcome to the Nancy Levin Show. I’m Nancy Levin, Founder of Levin Life Coach Academy, best-selling author, master coach, and your host. I help overachieving people pleasers set boundaries that stick and own self-worth, anchored in empowered action, so you can feel free. Plus, if you’re an aspiring or current coach, you are in the right place. Join me each week for coaching and compelling conversations designed to support you in the spotlight, as you take center stage of your own life. Let’s dive in.
Nancy: Welcome back. Thanks so much for tuning in. In this episode, I’m going to be sharing a foolproof tool for making change in your life. It is what I have coined as the Transformation Equation. So here’s how it goes. Change= vision + choice + action. I’ll say it again, change= vision + choice + action. I’m going to break it down for you and show you how it works.
First, if you want to make a change in your life, identify the change that you wanna make. Then invoke the vision you are holding of yourself and your life on the other side of making that change. Envision yourself and your life on the other side of that change. This vision you’re holding becomes the gauge by which you make your choices and take your actions. You want to be sure that all of your choices and all of your actions are in service of your vision instead of sabotaging your vision. Because ultimately, our choices and actions do one of two things only, serve our vision or sabotage it. We want to consciously make choices and consciously take actions that will bring our vision to fruition. This is why vision is so incredibly essential.
Once you have your vision, you have your roadmap. Your vision is your compass, as I said before, your vision is your gauge. Your vision is not something that needs to be created. And I just want you to take that in for a moment, if you are someone who repeatedly thinks or says, I have no vision, the truth is your vision exists within you. It just might be a little dusty, sort of hidden in a back corner, somewhere in the dark. We want to bring light to our vision. Your vision is something that excites you, something that you feel passionate about, your desired experience, your vision becomes the gravitational pull that moves you forward in your life toward whatever it is that you most want. Your vision is malleable, changeable, not stuck or static. So as you evolve, so does your vision.
One of the things people often get a little confused about is the difference between vision and goal. So in this Transformation Equation, think about the change you wanna make as the goal you want to achieve, and your vision is what is going to move you powerfully toward the goal or the change.
When it comes to choices, I always say that where we are right now in our lives, where you are, where I am, is the culmination of every single choice we have made up until this very moment. So if we don’t do anything different, life won’t change. This is why it’s so important to be open to making different choices. Your present moment choices predict your future, your present moment choice is the crystal ball that you want to look into to discover what your future holds. So if you want to know what your future will look like, all you need to do is pay very close attention to the choices you are making today.
Then when it comes to action, you want to back up your choices with action. It’s not enough to simply make a choice, it needs to be supported with action. So in terms of action, I like to first look at micro actions. Micro is the key. It is essential that when we identify an action, we make sure that it is realistic and doable, that it’s in our control, and that we set it in time, meaning we create a specific timeframe for it.
Now, I wanna bring in Parkinson’s law. I refer to this often, I’m paraphrasing, but Parkinson’s law essentially says the task at hand will take as long as the time we have allotted for it. So the task at hand will take the time we’ve allotted for it. If we allot an hour for something, it will take an hour. If we allot a week for it, it will take a week. Think about this in your own life, this is why it is so important to set our actions in time. It’s important to start paying attention to the ways that we give ourselves too much time to do things or conversely, not enough time for. So as you identify your own micro actions, you really want to make sure that you are setting them in a realistic timeframe to complete them. Because everything we do here is about setting you up for success, setting for success.
Now, I know that I often attract over achievers, and this is because our first coaching clients are always going to be an earlier version of ourselves. So I get the overachievers, the over-givers, the people pleasers, the perfectionists, the conflict avoiders. When clearly stating an action, an overachiever will often say, and I’m exaggerating this for the point here, but some version of, “I’m going to run a marathon every single day this week”, and of course this is not realistic. So I want to support you in refining your action. Again, micro. So this might be a refinement to I’m going to run for 30 minutes, three days a week. And then what you do is have the experience of potentially even under promising to yourself and over-delivering perhaps.
So when you put the transformation equation into action for yourself, when you put it into motion, simply identifying the change you want to make, which can also be the goal you’re setting for yourself, envisioning yourself on the other side of that change, having achieved that goal in the experience of what is possible when you do. Then using your vision as the gauge to make your choices, the ones that you need to make in order for your vision to come to fruition, and using that vision as a gauge around your actions. What are the actions you need to take to move powerfully forward into the change you wanna make?
Nancy: Hi, it’s Nancy interrupting my own show. I’ve got a lot of exciting things coming up in 2024, including a brand new book plus a group coaching opportunity, unlike anything else I have ever offered before. To make sure you are in the know, pop on over to my website now and sign up for my free weekly newsletter at nancylevin.com/newsletter so you don’t miss a thing. Okay, back to the show!
One of the things I see often that keeps us stuck is feeling like we need to take the right action. So I will let you in on a secret. There is no right action. Action of any sort will alleviate overwhelm, movement mobilizes possibility. So setting your foot down on one side of the fence or the other is going to create momentum for you, and you can always course correct. So if you put your foot down and begin moving forward and you realize it’s not quite the direction you wanna go in, you can course correct and shift. Like I said, your vision is your map. You can follow and track yourself on your own map so that you get where you wanna go.
Something else that often holds us back is feeling like we are living our lives in a vacuum. Feeling like we have to do everything alone. And that’s why I want you to think about commitment and accountability as the support structures for the transformation equation. This way you can learn how to hold yourself, and the promises you make to yourself. You start to learn that you can identify a commitment you’re willing to make and hold yourself accountable to it.
In addition, community and connection makes a huge difference. So you might wanna grab an accountability buddy. Wven if we have one other person who we are in connection with, we have someone who is holding our vision alongside of us, and sometimes even for us.
I know that one of my most sacred acts as a coach and a trainer can be holding a vision that my client has for themselves, but they can’t quite see it coming to fruition yet. But I can hold that vision. So I will sometimes simply ask my clients or students, are you willing to believe that I believe? So even if you don’t believe this vision is possible, are you willing at first to believe that I believe it’s possible for you so that we can hold each other in this vision?
Sometimes when I’m coaching clients or training students, I really invite them to suspend the how when they are excavating their own vision. So many of us hold back from naming elements in our vision because we haven’t figured out how. We also tend to believe some level of, I’ll never get what I want, so why bother wanting? When you suspend the how and remove the logistics, you stay truly connected to the vision within.
Coaching really is ultimately about moving from where we are right now to where we want to be. So looking at envisioning where we wanna be on the other side. Coaching requires a commitment to your own evolution, and as a coach, I’m here to hold you accountable to the commitment you are first and foremost making to yourself. That’s why I bring in the sense of community and accountability and commitment as the support structure, as the scaffolding around the Transformation Equation.
We don’t have to do this alone. We can do it with support. We can do it in community. We can do it utilizing our best ability and our best interests, making commitments and staying accountable. And this will always begin with staying accountable to ourselves. What is it going to take for me to hold the promise I make to myself? Think about that. What is it going to take for you to hold the promise you make to yourself? What is it going to take for you to stay accountable to the commitment that you make? Because we all know what it’s like to decide we want to do something and then let everyone else everything else take precedence.
So this really requires us to stay true to what I often share. Your first and most important client is yourself. Treat the time you set aside for yourself as your most sacred appointment. This means blocking out time for yourself on your calendar that is non-negotiable, that is immovable. I invite you to block out that time before you fill your calendar with obligations or even desires that take your attention elsewhere. Really notice what happens when you are willing to give yourself the time and attention and space that you deserve, that you desire, that you need.
I often talk about what your life would be like if you were willing to consider giving yourself permission to meet your own needs, at least as much as you’re meeting the needs of others. And notice what happens in your body as I say this, just really tune into giving yourself permission to consider your own needs at least as much as you’re considering the needs of others. Because this is what is required to truly make change. Instead of giving away all your time, giving away all your energy, what happens if you first harness your time and attention and energy for yourself?
What this looks like is every time you notice your thoughts going to what do they think? What do they need? What do they want? What do they feel? Turn the antenna inward. Ask yourself, what do I want? What do I need? What do I think? What do I feel? And start there. When you do this, it’s the first step toward true self connection. This can be a gateway for you into meditation or journaling. Even sitting down with these four questions, what do I think? What do I need? What do I I want? What do I feel? And answering them for yourself.
This is the power of self connection. This is what anchors and roots us in inhabiting our own lives. So if you identify with being a people pleaser, a peacekeeper, a conflict avoider, if you’re someone who is constantly wanting to make sure that everyone around you has what they need,if you want to make sure that everyone around you is happy, it’s really time to fulfill yourself first.
So when you are wanting to make changes in your life, start small. Identify the change, envision yourself and your life on the other side of having made that change. Use your vision as a guide, as a gauge by which you make the choices and take the actions that will serve you, that will bring your vision to fruition, and you can repeat this over and over and over again. The most important piece here is staying connected to you, staying connected to your own desires, your own needs, not discounting your needs, honoring that you deserve what you desire.
If what I’m sharing with you is resonating, I invite you to download my Transformation Equation Method guide. It will walk you through a series of explorations so you can begin putting this equation into practice right now for yourself. You can download the free guide at nancylevin.com/free. Once again, nancylevin.com/free. Let me guide you through this process. I am so thrilled that you’ve taken the time to be with me today, and I look forward to being with you again next time.
Thanks so much for joining me today. I invite you to head on over to nancylevin.com to check out all the goodies I have there for you. And if you’ve enjoyed this episode, please subscribe, leave a rating and a review. I’ll meet you back here next week.