“If you said at the start that I was going to end up with this as my goal, I wouldn’t have believed you!” numerous clients have exclaimed when we have got to the end of the first coaching session where I have supported (and challenged!) them to create the goals that they want to achieve by the completion of the coaching engagement.
This is the power of coaching: to help you go beyond that which you think that you are capable. Also, to get under the surface of what you think that you want or what you suppose that you need to change to accomplish X and delve deeper to uncover what lies hidden from view.
If I was coaching you, it would be easy to let you just go with the first topic and not do all this work; however, the positive impact and transformation will be much more limited. By stretching you to explore what you REALLY want, I help you to reveal what your emotional connections are.
This unleashes powerful motivation. This emotional drive will help fuel the adventure towards achieving the goal further down the line when it is likely (but not inevitable) that the going will get tough. It will support you to tap back into the reasons why you wish to achieve the goal. How your life will be different and what it will give you when, and only when, you achieve it and will add extra energy to the already bright fire within.
Creating a compelling Vision is therefore a critical part of the designing your best year (and the coaching process!) and it needs sufficient space and focus at the beginning. Many people are motivated by action and will want to rush into the ‘doing’ to get started. Is this you too? This is where I must help you to put the brakes on and take the time to envisage what you want and the impact of this – before you start your journey to making your Vision a reality.
Achieving clarity is vital to help you move forward. If you are staying stuck, it is because you cannot “see” what you want or need to do. Or, you can see it, however the images are blurry and opaque. By supporting, challenging and helping increase your confidence, it will reveal transparency and your clarity of thought.
When we know what we want and are motivated to move forward to get it, we can then more easily work out the “how.” This is the plan and by following it, we take a systematic and creative approach and make small or big, consistent steps of progress. Without a coach, a destination and a plan, we can simply blunder into action and be all over the place on our journey towards our goals.
Having a clear Vision of what success will look like is not enough though. Whilst the brain has a vast number of neurons associated with visual processing, the human body is a complete system, so it is advantageous to involve our other senses too. You want to experience the feelings and sensations of achieving the target, and this will be more motivating towards action from an energetic point of view.
Lock on to your Vision
When you are highly connected to your whole Vision of achieving a goal and the positive impact that it will have across your life (typically more than one area) this is powerfully motivating. You are what I call “locked on” to accomplishing your outcome, no matter what. You will stop at nothing until you attain it. This compelling commitment makes the rest of the getting your goal adventure flow more easily.
This matters because frequently in the adventure towards goal achievement there will obstacles, roadblocks and blind alleys to negotiate – and overcome. Without a compelling Vision to function as the guiding star, motivation can quickly dwindle, sabotaging efforts to persist in achieving the objective. When the going gets tough, you need a Vision to keep you going!
Imagine what you want to create
So, having established your exact starting point (see last month’s Brighter Thinking Tip), you can create your best year, each Quarter, month, week and/or day, by enjoying imagining what you would like your future to be.
Engaging all the senses will make this a rich, sensory process which is far more motivating and stickier for the brain than focusing on what you want to see alone. What is effective is capturing your Vision as a visual, written down or even recorded as an audio. How best to do this so that it is brain-friendly is the topic in the next Brain Hack sharing research for why doing so is effective. Check back for Part 2 on my website later this month.
You get what you focus on.
(Adapted from © The Brighter Thinking Coach (2025) by Rachel Bamber. Available from Amazon worldwide.)