Creating the life you want, and producing the results that matter to you is about ensuring you are clear on the values by which you live and lead that same life. If you expect challenges you may get them. If you anticipate a bed of roses and an easy walk through the park, it is likely you will get this or something akin to it. Develop the focus that supports you.
Your vision and the values by which you lead your life each day are crucial in underpinning the results you get and the actions you take in order to create the results you want.
If the vision you have is a measure of the breadth of your ambition then expanding your vision is likely to have a corresponding impact on the results that you achieve. Tied in very closely with this is the matter of the values that you embrace and live with as your pursue your vision of a life that truly reflects not only what you want, but also who you are.
The values you hold might be such things as honesty, hard work, thrift, balance, happiness, friendship, trust, self-discipline and others. Each one that you identify and adopt for yourself is a piece of your own personal jigsaw. In the same way that principles are timeless so too are values. These values act as a benchmark by which you can judge and assess not just the progress that you are making towards your goals, but also serve to help you measure yourself against colleagues and friends, clients and suppliers, relatives and family members.
A man spoke with me not long ago about an issue he was concerned about and which was based upon the clash of his vision and his values. While he was making more than adequate progress financially with the business he ran in his home town, he often found himself looking at other business owners who appeared to have more money, greater status in the chamber of commerce and greater success in life.
The issue that he wanted to discuss with me was abut the dilemma he found himself in. Knowing of a way to adapt his business that would allow him to make greater profits and bank much more money, his concern and the sense of his anxiety he presented me with was this - he could achieve the new contracts but only at the cost of doing some things that went against his most heartfelt values about the need for business to be a win- win relationship. Wanting always to feel that he gave a fair service for a fair price, the possibility that he could do some deals where his profit was out of proportion to the service now troubled him. To obtain the new revenues he would be doing things that he knew would cause him to feel guilty, and so he chose to listen to his heart and turned down the opportunity.
As he went away from our discussion he was concerned that he might have missed out on the 'apparently' lucrative deal, but pleased with himself for not having breached his value system.
Just two weeks later he called me up with great delight obvious in his voice as we spoke. He had that morning received an offer of a contract that was in line with his values of decent service, fair contribution and looking after the customer, and which would give him a significant uplift in his profits. He had been rewarded for not selling out his values and for maintaining his self-belief even after the stress of the previous opportunity.
In your own life there will of course be times when the principles and values that you live by will be tested. Equally, you will discover time and again that the more you lead a life in which your vision and values are in alignment together, you will receive rewards and pleasures unheard of by those who do not understand. Hold to what you know and feel to be right.