Episode 17 · 31:46
Visualise Your Goals
Visualising a goal can create energy, but it can also become fantasy detached from the work required. Dan and Tom explore how to picture a future vividly enough to guide choices while remaining open to a better destination appearing along the way.
The most useful vision connects an emotional reason, a visible reminder and a next action you can take today.
The useful bits
What to take with you
- Visualise the lived experience of a goal, not only the trophy at the end.
- A vision can evolve as you gain maturity and information.
- Choose carefully whose opinions are allowed to shape an early ambition.
- Pair every visual reminder with a behaviour that moves the goal closer.
Watch the conversation
The original episode.
Full conversation
Transcript
Transcript generated from YouTube captions. Dan/Tom speaker attribution is AI-assisted and may occasionally be incorrect.
And welcome again to don't be a doorstep you have returned have you subscribed have you liked have you start Have you shared if not now's a good time to do it because we're about to get into it and uh if you have we really appreciate you I was thinking that it'd be cool if someone had subscribed that you could insert like a special video for them while they're watching and if they haven't subscribed then you'd be able to.
Insert a you haven't subscribed yet you should subscribe because every time you watch your YouTube video and you have subscribed everybody still does that and if you've not subscribed please subscribe so it'd be like conditional sections of the video yeah that would be interesting but I don't think it's possible to do that um yeah but anyway visualizing um is your mic getting picked up yes or is it your headphones uh it's my mic why what do what do I sound like.
It's not as clear as normal but maybe uh it's probably right now in post-production we'll find out later as always should be my mic anyway visualization um last night or the night before or the night before that I couldn't sleep because I was visualizing meeting Rob and Ryan the wrexham co-chairs um which is actually good and I've started to do this more um as a part of new year new kind of um new set of goals new set of ambition.
Um trying to visualize what I want to see happen to give that sense of like hope and optimism and um I don't naturally do it as much as I'd like to Kim has looked really good at it so I'm trying to do it more and it makes you super excited which then gives you the energy to then do the task does that does that make sense so are you visualizing like for for you visualizing a win or visualizing a a.
Success or visualizing something that you've not got to yet but you want to get to um I probably wouldn't say visualizing I probably may be used to do it if let's say it's an important hockey game then you might visualize it to take the pressure out of it um but I must admit um recording back from my uh hockey days if I used to visualize scoring or playing well I would normally end up playing well because I think it's just.
Making that making yourself relaxed and believing in that in that process um so by the sort of I used to try and do it a lot more later on but I don't think I'd do it in my day-to-day I think I'd probably Vision cast or plan more than what would that feel if you're doing that now like being Moment by moment rather than I'll probably do it in three months time I'll probably do it in too much time oh there's a delay I'll.
Probably do it in four months time I think it's probably more that side rather than imagine you're doing it now whatever that dream is if it's swinging in Wembley or dancing around on Tick Tock with loads of followers or whatever it's like can I believe it now I don't think so but I think it's a good challenge to do to see okay what does that feel like because um like we're listening to the um what was it called the the diary of.
The CEO yeah yeah and how she basically how the interviewee or interviewer interviewee was talking about how booking a holiday a lot of the time the best part is the day before the holiday because it's the anticipation it's the you know you're going on holiday you get to rub it in people's faces and whatever comes with that and then the sort of excitement the visualization of this is going to be a great holiday but actually the holiday might be average or below.
Average um if things go wrong or if you lose your monzo abroad or whatever go back to episode three or whatever um but actually visualizing um the holiday and what it'll feel like or what's on the beach because obviously you're more likely to visualize a sunny holiday or I don't know it might be a winter if you're going to Iceland but if you're going to Spain you're visualizing a sunny Beach and you're living that out in the moment but then when you're there.
Let's say it rains for the week and afterwards you might be annoyed because it's rained all week so it's fascinating it's like ah actually you need these sort of um tent post holding up the tent of your your possibilities and your enthusiasm and motivation for life with things to look forward to yeah as you were talking I have checked my audio settings and have changed them because I think they're working for my airpods so hopefully they do some better.
Yeah I think it's um in visualizing that you don't necessarily need to um believe that it happens but it's kind of like it's motivation right because when it comes to making big jumps right so let's say off the back of last week we're talking about don't settle and you kind of want to to visualize getting out of whatever that situation is to a better situation it's probably because the reason why it's not happened so far is uncertainty and if you focus on the.
Opposite but keep speaking Yeah if you focus on the opposite of uncertainty which is that hope and optimism then the way that you can trigger that is visualizing like how would it how would you like something to be I remember when I was a kid I used to worry a lot and um mum and dad would be like visualize how you'd like school to go like visualize it a day and naturally that instantly put a smile on my face and it gave me.
Like optimism for that situation that in that moment was pretty bleak right um so I think it's like you don't need to necessarily feel like you can achieve it in that moment it's the kind of the motivation to see something different or or kind of like Get Around the the rebuttals or the or the kind of the the reasons why you cannot do it so I think the robin um the robin Ryan stuff is good and I've been trying to do it with like the.
School idea so visualizing what would it be if I like owned a school and yeah it'd be cool like Rylan Academy or whatever and visualize that and that gives me so much more um drive to do the the day-to-day get out the pit to then climb the mountain that is the University goal in some ways yeah I think it's reminded me of what what I was talking about I don't know if it's this morning with you or yesterday but I.
Actually I really struggle sometimes with not the casting out the vision but holding on to something maybe it shows how luck of patience I've got or whatever but holding on to something and fleshing it out over a long period of time because sometimes let's say you have a dream okay my dream was be a uh uh professional football player or hockey player and the dream that you cast out is you don't look at the pain the hardship the the difficulties which.
Is a good thing because I think it'll probably put you off going through your dreams um but but also you don't always understand what those dreams actually mean I think I'm fleshing out what does that what did that dream as my kid version of myself believe those things to be I remember thinking about being a footballer well being from a working-class background actually it was the source of income that I can help people close to me um achieve or succeed and have money as.
No barrier but it's recognizing oh actually I can still achieve that dream because I was thinking actually maybe we should create a podcast on um what would you call it like your football uh Pro footballer dream dying out because I think when you are 30s 30s onwards I know obviously Ronaldo's playing to his Peak but trying to get into pro football probably like after 25 onwards is like probably 0.0001 or something ridiculous and it's recognizing actually I'm sure loads of.
People have got that dream as being a footballer it might be like the influence side the money side the fame um maybe the charity work like um Marcus rashford is doing but as a kid you can't always comprehend that you just know it as a feeling and you attach it to the football but actually you go through this grieving process of particularly if you enjoy um the sport as well of ah I will never become that anymore which I think with.
Things like entrepreneurs or businesses you could always do that whenever but with some stuff very rare to be fair but with some stuff particularly with like football or high peak obviously you could switch to Snooker if you didn't mind what the sport was or or like um doing any like darts or something that might not be so much strenuous on your body but there are some deadlines for certain topics and it's hard when you pass that because then if your whole.
Live stream was that one thing and you didn't actually divulge in to was it just because I enjoyed football and I want to do something I enjoy but actually I enjoy doing gaming now so how can I make money out of that so it's sort of going making it more light-heartedness of what were those kid dreams and see if you could dissect it to find out what was the the emotion or the feeling behind it of helping people or helping yourself.
Get out of your situation which you might not be anymore and it's sort of it's an interesting um it's an interesting one because it's so easy to be oh I never got the football on so then you're um tally is zero you had one dream and you didn't reach it and then that could be how you which will never encourage you to go for your dreams because your whole body your lifestyle your emotions has gone well I always lose when I dream rather than.
Bringing it down the barrier of going oh it's helping people well actually I've helped people over the last 10 years actually I've been doing my dream for the last 10 years but how can I push that a little bit further uh I think two things to add on the dream stuff I think one is if you can't dream uh or struggling to dream so let's say you don't have that that dream or you can't visualize it because of the.
Scenario or the situation I think one thing happened when when I um applied for a job down in London a randomly uh applied for after graduating because mum saw a Facebook post about the job then I applied they actually extended the application period because they had no one else apply which is funny and also it was for a web job and I noticed that the form that they used was broken so I said hey your form's broken but here's.
My application which is a funny way to apply for a web designer um and then when I did get the job I was like okay cool how am I going to make this dream because every design or graphic designer typically all the narratives are you want to go to London that's that's where you want to go and be a graphic designer or website or whatever it is so how do I make this dream work and I think one of the best.
Things was like mind mapped out the options for me and one option would be to people yeah so it's like in the center you have moving to London and then you have different arms branched out and this is all pen and paper you have different arms branched out with the different ideas and then you basically segment that idea into smaller ideas and it just is a way of visually mapping out uh thoughts uh in a way that sometimes.
Removing it from your own brain gives you more space to like breathe and think about it so we drew out different ideas of how we would achieve the goal of you know this job or fulfilling this job and before remote work was really kind of a big thing like one option would be like yes move down to London and stay in somebody else's house in somebody else's room like another one is like see if you could basically commute from Nottingham and live with.
Your brother and then another one is like you could live at home and commute from North Wales now I know that living from home and commuting from North Wales sounds ridiculous to to do in a practical sense but just the fact that you're mapping all the ideas down the the kind of the far-fetched ideas or the difficult ideas versus the the simpler ideas um it really really helped make it um more perceived as like I can do this it.
Is possible and also the worst case scenario is that I live at home and commute from London and stay a couple of nights in London and then commute back so that would be wild and it'd be very difficult but if that kind of practice and that that um approach to kind of like visualizing a dream that's kind of like hard to see was helpful and also it brought a sense of control because I chose the idea right so I was like well okay we're.
Going to do number one so then I feel like I'm in control of this big thing of like moving to London which back then was pretty daunting um and and yeah again coming back to something that we've said before is like marching up to the moment like get the job then figure out how to get there which is what I did right then I had to mind map out how am I going to get there and I thought that that process really.
Really helpful uh to fulfill the dream and bring a sense of control and optimism then in that sense of uncertainty and then I think the second Point I've forgotten what it was but um yeah it was something about it yeah it was something about yeah the dream stuff but yeah you can carry on and I think what's useful with that mind map or spider chart or whatever you want to call it is like it is not it is working with your emotions rather.
And with your ideas on the creative side rather than your logistic logical side but then you can throw everything on a piece of paper then switch your brain to be like right everything is out I'm not thinking about all the different possibilities it's all done on a piece of paper so it's limiting that creativeness that emotion and then it's literally just one by one or or you might be doing batches of looking at all the different items and.
Looking at Trader so like if you lived in London you'd be like well actually there's not much of a better cost because the housing is more expensive than if you commute from North Wales but you won't get to meet new and interesting people because you'll be jetting off at home or you might be spending a lot of time on the train and I think it is it helps you I think I've always found it really useful when someone says.
Um how do you want to paint this room I'm like there's too many options everything is like going crazy in my brain but if it's like actually we want to create a Lightroom here are two colors which ones you prefer I would like I'll know exactly which one I like straight off the bat obviously I'll communicate might be a bit different depending on who's asking me um but you have an inclination of oh yeah that makes more sense than that one.
But when it is a blank piece of paper it's a lot more difficult so it's it's it's basically putting a Target up and then you and then you shoot an eye and shooting that like yep I want to aim for that one or I want to take off that goal or whatever and it's got something for you to aim for so I think that's a really good way of doing it yeah I think as well like if your goal is like you're.
Saying sometimes you go you miss your goal and it can be like um traumatizing almost to then think about goals and some things that that I've done is like one perspective is just like a key thing to utilize in that sense of okay you've missed it but what have you learned maybe it wasn't that you were going to be a Premiership footballer or a like a Premiership hockey player maybe it's the skill sets of building a team and leading something.
Is now utilized in this other goal of yours later down the line because again we've become more mature we we understand ourselves more we reflect more and figure out actually yeah this this Mountaintop wasn't the actual mountain top that I was going to finish at there's a second Mountain Top now that I go to and I think with with visualizing sometimes I've visualized something so big that yes it's great and it's motivating but then it's like but it's going to be ages until I get there.
So what do you do if it's really far and and too big and and sometimes too big of a goal can be demoralizing so two parts um remind me of the school part if I forget one um goals that sometimes they say Goals should be unachievable because otherwise it's not a good enough goal as it will um but sometimes when you do unachievable goals you're crushed when you don't reach them therefore don't think about creating goals that are a.
Bit outside your reach think about what did you do in year Zero versus now so for example me with business when I was doing business I think last year I was like right my goal is like 250k of of Revenue now I missed that goal um but I was like but if I look back to year zero my or my salary like I've tripled my salary like in like Revenue versus the salary wage that I got kind of thing so I've done really well so.
Sometimes not necessarily looking forward but actually looking back to where you were is a motivator as well so rather than saying like Okay this year now I'm gonna do two and three be like well I'm just going to carry on doing what I'm doing and then if I look back to my first year I will have done more than my first year so that's kind of like some some kind of like goal that I that I like doing.
Um and then the school part having this vision of a school is great really buzz like inspiring but again it's a bit too difficult to like do it straight away so what's a small iteration of that school so in doing I've been thinking um about doing like one day in the summer holidays to trial and prototype a version of my school or Academy where we'll have a group of kids split up split off into teams and we all solve a.
Problem that they come up with and vote for themselves and then they provide a solution for and then they present back the solution I think that will be the first iteration and first example of a of my school so then it's like oh yeah I can see there are achievable bits to this like visualizing owning a school you know when them craning in the word Ryland Ryland Academy in like a simpsons-esque style thing so um yeah I'd say those two things are something.
That I've been using as well yeah that's that's really interesting whilst you're talking about goals a thing that came to my brain as it always does it pops for different ideas is our goals more likely to not be achieved by not sharing them and what I mean by that is sometimes you can have an unachievable goal that you hold ing yourself accountable to that maybe you've misconstrued your goal because actually it is woven into something else so let's take the example of Premiership.
Football player that's a goal as a kid but you have an option to share that to either have those people to help you take you to the academies or buy your football boots or encourage you or you can just hold it in your style and hold yourself accountable that actually if you had the sort of Bounce board or to throw your ideas with someone they might have said what makes you want to be a footballer and then your first answer.
Might be like oh helping people because I've seen Marcus rashford to help people and he's getting different honors for that so then someone could help guide you to be like well these other people help like actors or entrepreneurs or or other avenues that then actually you're like oh actually isn't the football like that I care about it's just that is the thing in my world because my friends talk about it a lot but that is the segment that I'm.
Interested in the most so I guess it's really interesting and if you have a goal it's one of those difficulties because if you do share it some people might think you're crazy but also if you share it with people that respect you that love you that support you you have the option of fleshing out what does that goal like what is your heart aching for well it might not necessarily be the the football element it might be helping.
People but equally if it is the football element call like how can you rally up the community around you to encourage you to go for a run even though it's raining and that type of thing rather than you feel like you're carrying this burden and then once you've hit let's say 25 26 and you know we're near it and you're like oh that's done you spent your whole life work to aim for that one goal but now you're in a grieving.
Process because basically that dream has died and then your whole the rest of your life is is in your eyes worthless rather than going actually I'm going to Journey this out with others around me and make it a more lighter burden that I can either have annual checks or monthly checks to make sure enough football is the thing that's the bit I care about well actually it is football but in the last six months I've realized I really look up to the coaching and.
Actually I really want to push the coaching door so it's like cool why don't you do the football and push the coaching but actually now do more coaching I want to coach locally to see what that looks like and it is sort of um fleshing out what that dream looks like to you it's so difficult because you know when it comes to sharing your sharing your goal or sharing the Journey of achieving the goal it reminds me of like.
Um experiences like it takes one bad experience um like one bad experience is almost equal to five six seven good experiences so going back to the I want to be a footballer if you told people that and if there was no reference point and depending on the emotional state of that person at that time that you tell they might be like a footballer you're rubbish at football right because actually they want to be the footballer and they want the self-confidence to be.
Able to tell you that they want to be a footballer so I think it's I think in the early stages you basically it's better to not tell anybody and find people that are already sharing stuff and then you can be like oh now that you've shared that I can then come in with my thing because you want to kind of not cast your pilsman swine you want to protect it because it takes a lot of mind washing to be able to achieve.
Um goals that don't look representative of the area that you've come from or the family background that you come from or if you're the first person that's going to do this or whatever so it's it's really hard to for people to find reference points and also get out of their own um kind of situations to visualize it for you or on your behalf so I would say don't tell anybody that'd be my first instinct then if you are going to tell.
Somebody it would be like oh it'd be cool someday to run a school wouldn't it then it's like oh it's just an idea but internally and to your private friends like the to the people that are on your side you need to be so convinced that you need to be like absolutely like delusional with that self-belief that you're going to do it and I would say sometimes privately doing it is like enough to keep it protected and keep the energy levels up.
Because it doesn't take like as you know like your experience with working with people in my experience working with people it only takes that one person to say like why are you positive all the time and you're like oh should I not be positive like that really crushed me in that moment and then I was like questioning my whole entire like existence as a human being because somebody said oh I've been positive of course it would have been great to brush.
It off but it did what it did right it resonated unfortunately so it's like you don't want somebody to do that with your your goal so I'd say be very protective of it um I'm not sure but I'm also aware that I'm at the stage where I'm like I'm actually sharing some of it and opening myself up to negative criticism because negative criticism exists you're not going to be able to have a hundred percent of people friendly and positive.
With you there's going to be a chunk whether or not that's 10 20 30 40 whatever that chunk is of negativity is going to happen so where can you trial it out in the small to kind of make sure that you're not going to be um like pushed off your your um your stool for example if I said to you like you you tell me your goal is like I want to be a Premiership hockey player will play internationally hockey I'd be like.
But your loads better at football why don't you do football now you might be no I'm convinced I'm grounded so you might be okay allowing some people to like critique or like question because it makes you like double down on hockey because you've you've value you've like verified the reason why it's hockey is because it's X Y and Z so it's a balance but I would say broadly speaking don't tell people your goals write it down in a book have a vision board have it.
Behind a curtain and like look at it every day and like brainwash yourself with that achievement and find people that are already talking about their goals and their visions like I I think that'd be better because I think otherwise um it's like trying to battle uh a monsoon of opinions I think and most of the time they're a little bit jaded towards the negative side or are you sure you want to do that isn't that gonna be really.
Hard you know um yeah it is an interesting one and I think it is that making sure that you've got boundaries of knowing who you're sharing it with um I think it's recognizing that they are they are for you um through support through through love so that you know that you're sharing and they want your best interest obviously there's going to be a tinge of oh but that means that you're pulling away from our relationship because you might be.
More busy with that or whatever but equally you might need that buy-in for for borrowing the family car or whatever on a Thursday to go to your training um so it is yeah it is a fine line of using both at the same time yeah because I think now I've become more public um probably because my business hasn't failed um and that's probably why I'm more public but also I'm more public because I want to get more comfortable with.
Failing in public because failures lead to successes it's a part of the journey and I think I'm trying to get more comfortable with being um like embarrassment and stuff like you know my my my book or books over here like I've done that because I know that I need to make a first step in this long journey and nobody like if somebody said this book is rubbish it's not going to stop me from carrying on because that's just one opinion and.
Literally opinion I don't care because I'm focused like again I've I've nailed it down to I'm focusing on execution you need the first one before you get the last one you need the first iteration before you have the best iteration so I'm just doing that now of course someone would be like oh that's stupid or whatever or if it goes nowhere it doesn't matter because I've just inspired someone because hopefully there is a chunk of other people that were.
Like how they're done like think he has the audacity to get away with writing a book he's not even an author but they might be an author or they might be an illustrator so I'm looking forward to like inspiring that stuff so my kind of like own Venture in my book is one I'm very grounded and I know exactly why I'm doing this it's not because of this one book here it's for presenting a 3D animation series to s4c that's gonna.
Happen and they're gonna buy it off me kind of thing are going to pay me to to license it to to watch it I know that that's going to happen so you can laugh and joke about this stuff but you'll see me willing gold medals and you were laughing and joking at the first book kind of thing so it's like I have to be very grounded and then it just comes with because I'm like deluded in my own.
Self-belief which I have to work on continuously and I work on continuously by brainwashing myself I've been listening to a book about how to become a millionaire like just brainwashing myself um to to and work on my mindset because that's the thing that's going to keep me going or stop me from going and yeah interestingly if you want to become if you want to become a millionaire they were saying that 10 of people Acquire The Wealth so 90 of people make.
The wealth and most of those people if not all of those people have made it through entrepreneurship or self-employment so a business of some sort so there are a few people that are like super high up employees like execs or like paid extortionate amounts of money for being like their employee cut but if you want to be a millionaire then your own business is the root as a starting point to it but yeah I think visualize visualization practice visualizing your.
Goals and dreaming about good interactions and good things and um vision boards or and other good things like writing stuff down like getting it out on paper you don't need to tell anybody but if you do want to tell somebody you can DM us and we'll be excited for you whatever um whatever that goal is and it can change like my goal I wanted to be a bin man and it's changed and that's fine I'm not like um upset with that it got me to stage.
One then now goal two got me to stage two my goal was I want to own my own digital agency then I was like actually I don't that that's not the end goal I want to actually own a school or run a school like but I'm not there yet I'm on the journey today but I'm making steps towards it you know so it always shifts always shifts closing comments thank you nothing the end and on that point I do remember we're still in Jingle.
January so if you've got any jingle ideas for don't be a dust up then please submit them I've got the form up yet um probably with this episode yeah well we've had no submissions so far yeah so yeah we will we will um that's in the description yeah if you want to buy my book I actually realized so funny story we'll get it on Kindle there's um QR codes at the back and I've basically got a Welsh QR code and an English QR.
Code and then the company that I was using to create the QR codes with it's like a seven day trial and then now you have to pay to use the QR code which I thought was so annoying so I've only discovered that that was the case because usually QR codes yeah there's a pyramid scheme going on so now when you scan so these are proofs that's where you see the line across the side now when you scan it it won't go anywhere.
Because it's like you need to pay for this stuff so I'm like oh cool I'm gonna have to find a free thing to do it so I've just replaced it so hopefully in three days time when when those changes get approved the book will actually have the right QR QR code that goes to the Amazon page so you can buy more books but um so yeah keep going there's always these branches that get in your way but all you need to do is keep up the.
Velocity keep up the momentum and on that note keep on hammering those Nails bye for now.