Creating My 2020 Vision

I've been thinking a lot lately (a lot!) about what I want to do in 2020. I have to say, I've never looked so forward to a new year. That is to say, I've never thought so much about what I would like to be doing in the new year. Especially, this far ahead of time.

I've been self-employed now for nearly 3 years as a coach. This has been a huge transition for me from getting a salary as an employed software developer. We can talk another time about what drove me from that consistent high salary into the uncertainty of the consulting lifestyle, but I can honestly say that this has been the most uncertain, transformational, and rewarding period of my life.

Every year I define what I want to achieve for me and my business in the next year. A unique feature of coaching is there is no separation between those two sets of goals. I am my business and my business is me. People don't sign up for my coaching because of the tools and techniques I employ, they sign up because of who I am; because they trust and believe I can help them to achieve the results they're looking for.

Therefore, my yearly goals align with both my personal and professional goals without any separation, but for most people it will make sense to separate these and generate goals for both personal and professional areas of your life.

What will it take to create inspiring and powerful goals for 2020?

Purpose

Setting specific goals should always be done in the context of an overarching purpose. Otherwise, the goals can get stale or seem meaningless when we're in the middle of crafting strategies and actions to achieve them. Therefore, I always start with re-assessing my own purpose and revising it if needed:

My purpose is to serve people powerfully to help bring them into a way of being that enables them to achieve the life of their dreams.

Simple right? Not really, but it does sound simple which is a good gauge to me of a clearly stated purpose.

Just to be clear, your purpose does not have to be high-minded or particularly elegant. If you just want to make money, it's not a problem to have that as a purpose. The key is that it should be something that inspires you every time you look at it or think about it. Use your purpose statement whenever you're feeling demoralized, frustrated, or unfocused to get you back on track. This is actually a good way to test if your purpose is well-stated: does it help you to get back to business when you are losing focus on the goals or tasks at hand?

Completion

There is another important factor that will greatly impact the way you craft objectives: how complete are you with the past? Completion is essentially the act of putting the past where it belongs: in the past. When we craft goals or objectives based on what went "wrong" in the past of what needs to be "fixed", we are dragging the past along with us into our future. It isn't inspiring or powerful and will lead to mediocre results that look a lot like what happened before.

What you want to do is get really complete with the past to create a clearing for future action. This is done by

• Powerfully recognizing and acknowledging the accomplishments we've achieved.
• Identifying the places where we are incomplete in the past: objectives that weren't reached, breakdowns in relationships that haven't been healed, difficult episodes that we haven't digested, etc.
• Determining what we want to do about things that are incomplete. Is there a conversation that needs to be had? A meditation on the subject? Writing about it? Or just a simple determination and decision that it is in the past and it is done.

The key to completion is to imagine a line drawn in the present moment that separates the past and the future and to make a clear determination that nothing crosses that line in a way that causes confusion or frustration or any loss of emotional energy.

Futurability

Once you are complete with the past, you need to start defining your actual objectives for the upcoming year. You may be pretty clear on those at this point, but if your goals are not well crafted the chances of success are not so good. What makes an objective one that is likely to be achieved? We don't always know, but there are a number of factors that, if attended to, will create goals that are highly achievable.

These factors are called "futurability":

Futurability: The ability of an objective to be realized in the future. Futurability has to do with the formulation and process in achieving an objective or outcome.

There are 8 characteristics defining futurability of an objective:

1. Owned - it's your choice, not influenced by any external obligation
2. Relevant - it is in line with your purpose
3. Measurable - you can identify clearly when it is accomplished
4. Achievable - not a "pipe dream" or fantasy
5. Inspired - beyond what you have achieved in the past, a stretch
6. Committed - you will overcome difficult circumstances to achieve it
7. Spoken - you have told others about it
8. Coached - you have a coach to support you in achieving it

When those criteria are applied to any stated goal and that goal is adjusted to comply with every one of them, the chances of success for that goal are extremely high.

Creating My 2020 Vision

I have begun to create my plans and goals for 2020 using the techniques described here:

1. Clarity of purpose: getting clear on my stated purpose and revising it as needed.
2. Completion of 2019: landing the year powerfully with acknowledgement of accomplishments and recognition of what is incomplete.
3. Generating specific goals within the futurability framework.

Completion can be a challenging undertaking that can take some time. In my coaching, I use a set of completion questions and work through them with the client as needed. Every client who has undertaken this process with determination has reported extraordinary results.

The same goes for futurability. When clients develop objectives within the futurability framework, they inevitably generate results far beyond what they had imagined possible.

You can start now to create your 2020 objectives using these techniques. If you would like help or guidance or more information on how to do this, please get in touch with me.

Workshops

I hold yearly workshops on using this structure for creating the vision for the next year and it is extraordinary to see the amazing results that attendees have experienced:

I attended David’s “Are You Ready for 2018?” workshop and learned skills that guided me to completing 2017 with a strong landing and allowed me to achieve in 2018 each objective I set during the workshop. David’s attention to detail, empathic approach, and steady guidance helped me yield these life-changing results. I would recommend this workshop to anyone as a personal or professional goal-setting framework to support positive decision-making on future plans as well as timelines to chart the course and empower you to obtain them.

If you would like to create your vision for 2020 with others in a supported environment guided with an expert on the subject, consider attending my upcoming workshop on December 2nd.

Find out in detail how to do everything I've described in this article in my upcoming workshop on the subject: "Vision 2020: Setting Your Sights on Your Goals for 2020" happening on December 2nd.