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Live Your Vision
IF YOU’VE EVER been on an airplane, you probably knew exactly where you were going. You didn’t just hop on board and say, “Let’s see where we wind up.” In life the mission is more ambiguous. We don’t always know which direction to head, and occasionally we may question whether or not we’re on the right course. Without a clear destination in mind, life is tough to navigate.
That was the way my wife and I felt when our first child was born. We were so excited to become parents, but we had no idea how to make everything work in terms of maintaining our careers, taking care of our newborn, and still having quality time together. My wife put her fulltime job on hold to stay home with our daughter while I continued traveling for business and basically living out of a suitcase most of the week. When I got back from a trip, I just wanted to decompress and have quality family time before jetting off again. My wife, on the other hand, was totally exhausted from being up every night with the baby and just wanted to sleep or have a minute to herself. She loved being a mom but felt like she was doing it all alone and in the process losing her husband and professional identity. I loved being a dad and enjoyed my job but felt like I had become an absentee father. This was not the life we had envisioned.
One weekend my parents stayed with the baby while my wife joined me on a work trip to Toronto. On the plane ride we talked at length about how we wished life could be different. In our vision of the future, I was spending less time on the road and we were parenting more collaboratively. In addition to being a mother, my wife was working part-time. We were traveling together as a family and living life on our own terms. While this was a wonderful vision, it seemed far too idealistic and out of reach.
Midway through the flight, my wife unexpectedly asked, “What do you think about moving to Europe for a year? We could live our vision over there and have an incredible adventure as a family.”
I thought she was kidding. “We have a new baby, a dog, a mortgage, two car payments, and limited finances,” I reminded her.
“Those are indeed challenges,” she replied. “But what if we could find a way to work it all out—would you do it?”
I knew she was serious, and as crazy as the idea sounded, I was excited to go if we could somehow work out the logistics and a way to afford it.
It took us less than a month to get our game plan together. By focusing on how to make our vision happen as opposed to why it couldn’t happen, we were able to come up with creative solutions. For instance, we rented out our house and subleased our cars. My sister-in-law, who at the time was studying abroad in London, offered to help us with taking care of the baby. I worked out an arrangement with my clients so that I had to come back to the United States only a couple of days each month. Then we bought the cheapest one-way tickets to London we could find and set off with an infant for the most incredible year of our lives. We made the impossible possible by turning our vision into a reality.
During that time we traveled to almost two dozen countries in Europe and the Middle East. My daughter ate her first cookie in Venice, napped next to the Coliseum in Rome, learned to walk in Norway, chipped her tooth in Greece, went to the Wailing Wall in Jerusalem, visited the Great Pyramids in Egypt, and had a bite of the biggest pretzel ever at Oktoberfest in Munich. My wife got inspired and started planning her next career move. We truly lived our vision as a family and had no regrets. It was invigorating and unforgettable.
You don’t have to move to a foreign country or travel abroad to start living your vision, but you do have to get clear on where you’re headed. What do you want tomorrow to look like? What will it take to make that happen? Instead of focusing on the barriers to making your vision a reality, consider what success looks like in the absence of those barriers. Find innovative ways to change your current circumstances. Live your vision and leave your regrets behind. Don’t just dream it; do it.
∼ What is your vision of the future for your life?
∼ How will you make that vision a reality?