Activate Your Highest Vision: The Linear Model

by Emma Laurence

This blog is part two in the Activate Your Highest Vision series.

Activating your vision means you’re actively working on your dream this moment, this day. So, let’s explore ways to engage the dream-building process. We’ll start with the most familiar, the linear model.

In school, the linear model is really the only way we’re taught to reach our goals. The shape is a straight line, wherein sequential, actionable steps get you from point A to point B.  Everything from the scientific method, to algebraic equations, to foreign language syntax—even our educational system itself—is linear-based.

Now, actions in sequence can be effective for achieving goals IF you’re clear on your vision, you’ve broken down the correct steps into manageable tasks, and you’re persistent.

For example, let’s say you want to learn to play guitar. Buying, borrowing, or renting an instrument is a clear first step, followed by taking lessons or just playing around until you figure things out on your own. Eventually, if you keep showing up, you’ll learn to play. Nothing very new in this approach.

Activate Your Vision With a Linear Model

In coaching, the linear model can be used creatively, with an activation angle. Case in point, a colleague of mine coached a company’s sales team to increase revenue in a flat market. Patrick identified an energy decline on Friday afternoons and a slow ramp up to momentum Monday mornings as what needed addressing.

First, Patrick invented a way to activate a higher vision, with the slogan, “Fridays make your best Mondays.” On Friday morning, sales reps listed 10-15 local area prospects that would be a big win. Next, Patrick provided small steps towards an increased sales goal. Team members were to visit the premises of their prospect list on Friday afternoon to check out the landscape, the neighborhood, and the vibe. Then, all gathered back at the office for a pizza party to share insights.

By Monday, reps were poised to enter the building, greet the receptionist, and get the name of the person in charge of marketing. Other incremental steps built on one another. Enjoyable, actionable tasks in sequence moved the team towards the higher vision. [check out Patrick Kagan’s Sales Hindsights podcast for more on this story.]

Linear success comes from clear vision, manageable tasks, and persistence. 

In daily life, a linear approach works, too. Driving to a favorite restaurant, or following a recipe, requires the linear approach. The vital importance of sequence is made clear when you’re having surgery. You want your anesthesiologist to do his job before your surgeon does hers!

But, Is the Linear Model Working for Me?

An interviewer once asked me, how do you know if the linear model is working when you’re in the middle of a large project? He couldn’t always tell if he was making real progress towards his overall goal.

The linear path works best when you’re relaxed and enjoying a pace that’s sustainable—a healthy, happy rhythm that’s in alignment with you. In the success zone, you move fairly easily, though not without obstacles, from one step to the next. More importantly, incremental progress, growth, or expansion will move you forward and upwards, like steps in staircase. You’ll be able to measure the success rate of smaller steps in and of themselves—and, you’ll gain traction. Result? You get closer to the vision you imagined possible.

If the linear approach is not working, you’ll always feel that your goal remains in the distance. You’ll reach for something that’s ever receding. It’s the carrot dangle; the end does not come closer. And the more you do, the more needs to be done.

Clients who are unsuccessful with the linear model often say, I feel like I’m taking one step forward and two steps back. This language indicates to me that they’re trying to move in a straight line, and it’s not effective. 

Is It Possible I’m Not a Linear Person?

Yes! It’s very possible that a linear approach is not for you; and, it’s not the only one. When people, especially Millennials, show up at my door who have tried reaching a goal this way, they often tell me, in frustration, or even tears:

I can’t get there;

I can’t do this;

What’s wrong with me?;

I’m a failure;

Why can’t I do this?!

And I say, You’re not a failure. You just need a different approach. By working with many talented and spirited clients, I’ve been able to identify four other ways to activate your highest vision—cyclical, serpentine, figure eight, and universal. Each style is increasingly non-linear.

So, if you’re struggling in a linear world, please keep reading this blog series. Maybe you’re more creative than you think.

Photo by Ruffa Jane Reyes on Unsplash

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Activate Your Highest Vision, Part 1

by Emma Laurence

This is part one in a blog series on how to activate the highest vision of your life.

If the highest and best vision for your life (or your business) were to be fully realized now, what would it look like?

Watch how this question opens a door to the specific dream currently living in your imagination. Be brave. Enter this new room by letting yourself explore the sights, sounds, and feelings of your highest ideal or greatest passion, fully realized.

Now, you have full permission to be creative in this process. Write or paint your vision, sing or dance it. For creative people, even the sky isn’t a limit—and dreams do come true.

How dreams come true is the focus of this blog series. So, let’s begin.

If You Can Picture It, It’s Here Now

If you’re ready to enjoy the freedom and accept the responsibility of creating your own world, there’s a key principle to embody:

The present moment is the only one in which dreams are made or broken.

Similarly, fears are overcome or given into in this moment. Life is either fully lived or denied—one moment at a time.

So, how does this principle play out when activating your vision?

If you can picture what you’d love to create, it already exists now. If you can imagine the sights, sounds, and feelings, it’s already here. You might say, yeah, but it’s just in my imagination. True. And which, of all the inventions in human history, hasn’t first begun in someone’s imagination?

Therefore, holding the vision in this moment of what you believe possible means it already exists somewhere. Think of it as dwelling in a parallel universe, if you like. Or, in “the future,” if that helps. Don’t let the mind get too concerned about where or when. Just be willing to entertain the possibility that your vision is, relatively speaking, real.

How ‘Activate Your Highest Vision’ Works

The word activate is powerful. It involves action, here and now, that brings the power of potential into reality.

Let’s take a simple example. You go hiking with friends, and at the summit, you all lean in for a selfie. And you’re not surprised when, less than a second later, you’re looking at that same image on your screen.

The activation of a dream works the same way. It just takes more time.

For example, back up to when you first decide you want to go hiking. You have a vision of you, your dog, and a couple of friends piling into your Honda, heading out of town on Saturday morning. You can see the group hitting the trailhead, laughing as you walk up the path, stopping to snack at a waterfall, and enjoying an amazing landscape view at the top.

Wouldn’t that be fun? Yes! You can almost feel that joy right now.

While it may take days, and certain preparations, for you to have the hiking experience, you’ve actually set up the image in your mind in much the same way as you used your phone.

So, frame the shot, do the work—image realized.

What Form Does ‘Activate Your Highest Vision’ Take?

The real question most people bring to coaching when they want to activate their vision is, how will this take shape in my everyday life?

Honestly, by the time a client gets to me, the manifestation or how is already taking form. It’s happening! When you’re in transition, it’s difficult to get the overview. But, the beginnings of a new life are already present—or you wouldn’t even be seeking help to make a change.

So, what’s already showing up? And, how will your dream take form in daily life?

The rest of the blogs in this series will address the form of your journey. I’ve identified five different rhythms that you naturally use to activate your highest and best—without even realizing you’re doing it! These rhythms are like forms in motion.

Learning your natural rhythm is a huge gift! You get to relax. You recognize your own genius. And you gain confidence to bring your vision into physical reality, one action at a time.

So, keep reading! See if one of the rhythms—linear, cyclical, serpentine, figure 8, or universal—makes sense for you. You can stop “reaching to achieve” your goal. Instead, begin to activate your highest vision, now.

Photo by Peter Conlan on Unsplash

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Shifting to the Core

by Emma Laurence

If you’re like me, you’ve spent a lot of time with your thoughts.  At times, they’ve crowded the inner landscape to such a degree that you’ve exhausted yourself, become confused and frustrated, and had a hard time sleeping.  They can be of a negative nature or an excitable one; the impact on the nervous system seems similar.

The focus on thoughts in our world today—and plenty of words to describe them that get rehashed on media outlets—creates a loop pattern.  Certain ideas or beliefs run and re-run until a groove settles in that can then be difficult to undo.  Add to this that children take on the patterns in their home, society and culture of origin, and it’s pretty hard to tell which voice inside our heads is truly our own, if we bother to ask.

I have a steel-trap sort of mind that won’t let go.  It gets bored easily, wants to “figure out” everything, and insists it’s at the top of my identity’s food chain. 

I’m also blessed and challenged with a sensitive, empathic, easily hurt emotional heart that I’ve learned to protect and tend.

Yet beyond mind and heart lies a territory that we humans must explore if we’re to evolve.  At the core of any living being is a true spiritual intention that may or may not make sense to the mind and emotions. 

The core intention serves all life (within and without) from a higher perspective that embraces everything below. It’s the truth behind what we do. Like unconditional love, this core can resonate as respect, compassion, charity, or even bonds of brotherhood. It can express itself in any creative form.

I like the metaphor of the shinbashira—the central pillar of a pagoda’s construction that’s built to be movable, like the flexible spine of the human body. The shinbashira is part of what makes these beautiful, sacred structures earthquake resistant.

I also love the French word for heart, coeur, which is closer to the English word core.

The shift to living each day from a central pillar often follows a life-changing event wherein we’ve been “shaken to the core.” Paradigms reverse and perspectives expand. We become aware of a bigger picture in which we’re part of a living, breathing whole.

Priorities flip. Smaller annoyances shrink in importance as we recommit to the love in our lives (people, places, actions, arts) that make life worth living.

The transition is the tough part. We may find it difficult to calm the mind and heart enough to feel our shinbashira or hear our core truth.  Our faith or trust may appear intermittent as we work at realigning with a new way of being.

The current pandemic is more than an earthquake whose aftershocks we will feel for an indefinite length of time.  It’s the best opportunity we have for contacting our core. We’ve been given the chance to ground in our essential (coeur) intention, one that may hold a surprising, primal message awaiting our discovery.

Photo by Francesco Ungaro from Pexels

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What Brings You Joy?

by Emma Laurence

My husband and I anticipated the joy kittens would bring to our home.  The vet was 90% sure our newly adopted cat was pregnant.  And though she couldn’t feel individual kittens, she predicted we’d have a brood in three weeks.

Then, a turn of events.  Our cat began behaving like she was in heat.  Hmmm, we thought.  What about the other 10%?

After a few days of this behavior, we called the vet to chat.  She agreed that she’d misread the swollen belly as pregnancy rather than hormonal build up to estrus.

Isn’t it a curious moment when, having planned for one outcome, Life takes a 180 degree turn?  I felt sad as I disassembled the dream of playfulness, cuteness and laughter filling our home. 

This wasn’t a severe disappointment, but the process seems to be the same for releasing human emotions.  Grief, felt at various depths, eventually gives way to acceptance.  Life does go on.

A younger version of me would have spent a lot of time analyzing the possible reasons—human or divine—for this abrupt change.  I might have wondered how I, and the vet, made such a mistake.  More likely, I’d have questioned what Life was trying to teach me about the build up and dashing of expectations, or about investing in a specific future.

Present-day me moved through that stage quickly.  Instead, I watched images of a future with kittens dissolve.  I didn’t dwell on blame or questions.  I gave thanks for our cat, Zoey, in our lives and let it be.  I let the sadness be, too.

The next day, a wise friend happened to ask, what are you doing right now in your life to bring you joy?  Great question.  I had to admit I wasn’t being proactive.  I was slumping, waiting for something outside me (like a houseful of kittens?) to bring me joy. 

She then shared a technique she invented to practice wellness.  She makes a list of things that her bring joy and does one an hour.  It might be as simple as listening to a particular song, or making soup, or journaling.

I loved this idea and started right away doing small things to inspire joy.  I drove by the llama farm to catch a glimpse of the newborns, took a walk in the sunlight, and listened to “Gabriel’s Oboe” performed by Henrik Chaim Goldschmidt.                        

Soon, I felt much lighter.

Now, I don’t expect to live in a joyful place all the time.  I don’t even believe that’s the goal.  But I do need a balance in tough times. 

I wonder, what might make your list?

Joy lives inside us.  Though prompted by people, animals, places or things, the qualitative experience we call joy is inward.  It’s our choice when to reach for that ever-present state and how to prompt an opening heart. 

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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This Gift Moment

by Emma Laurence

I stood casually in the lobby of my Temple chatting with friends before an evening event.

All of us had moved to Minneapolis within the last couple of years from various places on the American map.  One couple had relocated only last week.

How did we get to this moment? I wondered with awe, knowing each of us had a powerful story that brought us to the precise place of standing in that lobby. 

In fact, the chances that we’d all be in the same place at the same time were incalculable given the miracles that had to occur for the moment to exist.  These were major miracles like financial windfall, marital reinvention, a rare real estate opportunity. 

Some dreamed of this moment.  Some never saw it coming.

Earlier that day, my sister shared moments of grace and protection—being able to say goodbye to someone who’s in Hospice, being helped by cheerful doctors and nurses who tended an injury she’d sustained in the kitchen.

A friend texted to thank me for referring her to a health care practitioner and another friend saying she had a special experience to share when I had time. 

My husband and I considered an overseas adventure trip while, outside the front window, our next door neighbor walked her dog quickly in subzero temperatures.

This movement of people and places, beginnings and endings, all in motion as if part of one large dance fascinates me.

If we could see from above, what would the pattern look like? 

I believe it would be mind-blowing.

We make choices based on the intention we set for our lives.  And Life responds by bringing us people, pets, experiences and opportunities in alignment with that intention.

Our ability to perceive the gift of this moment is all we can truly lay claim to in this life.  The future doesn’t exist; the past is a whisper.  But the present breath is alive.  Are we?

The next time you’re casually standing with friends in a parking lot or strangers in a grocery store line, gathered with co-workers at a meeting or with family at a dinner table, you may want to take a moment to breathe in the gift.  This is Life. 

P.S.  As an aside, I was challenged to find a photo of people taken from above to accompany this blog.  Aerial shots of landscapes are plentiful, but not of people. 

What does that say about the viewpoint from which we see ourselves?  And what could we learn by getting above to look upon our lives below?

Photo by Fritz Olenberger