Where do you want to go? What's your big picture dream?

Business can get us swept up in the tactics and details, which are important.

AND I think it's also important to dream, to think of the big picture and the vision you have for you, the business you want to run and the humans you want to work with - and that's what we're chatting about today.

'Dreaming, after all, is a form of planning' - Gloria Steinem.

Let's dive in.

Links, resources & mentions

Andrea Ranae Johnson

Whose values

Episode Transcript

Laura Jean 0:10

Hello, and welcome to another episode of The dietitian values Podcast. Today I would like to talk to you about your big picture dream for the world, your vision for the world, for the humans you work with, for your business, and for you and the life you want to live. Let's dive in. So there's many things that I think are important when you're setting up your business to really get clear on, obviously your values, because they're clearly a passion of mine. But another thing that I think is really important is to think about your vision, your big picture dream for the business that you want to build for the humans that you want to work with and for you and the life you want to live, and how can you bring those together in the way you run your business, and in the way that you move towards your values. And I think that by having that big picture vision and not in a like pressure like you must reach this vision but more in an aspirational like this is where I'm moving towards you know this is what I'm aiming for. When we, and I've talked about this before, is goals are only helpful if they take you where you want to go. So you need to know where you want to go first before, I think before, to to guide your strategies in your business, to guide the tools and techniques you use and to guide the goals that you set because if you are moving towards somebody else's version of a successful business, somebody else's vision of what they have for your life, then you're not going to get where you want to go, you're not going to get to the point where you are in insert word here satisfied, happy, content, whatever you're aiming for.

So, let's think about how, or I'm asking you to think about what is your vision. Now, before you do think about this, there's a couple of things to think about so, before you think here's some things to think. What I mean by that is, I don't want you to use this as a way to judge yourself to feel bad because you haven't quote unquote got it all figured out. Little secret or not, not so secret secret, your vision, your big picture dream can and probably will change as you grow and learn, and unlearn as you grow in your business as you get clearer on what you want to do as you try things out and you find your no's. When you know what you want to say no to, you know, that can help to shape your vision and so when you first start out, so want to be, you know, just to give yourself Grace basically because when you first start out your vision might be different from it and when you move along, it doesn't it's not set in stone you know you don't have to chisel this into a stone tablet, you can just type it up on a little document and the beauty of that is you can delete things, you can change things you can edit it, but it's about having that starting point. So that's really important because we don't want to use this as another tool to like, you know for self flagellation, for judgement. For some, you know, just one other thing we're not kind of quote unquote measuring up to. So having your vision and your big picture dream is just giving you some where to go but it's also giving you that opportunity to dream, and I love that, um, there's a few people who talk about this, I've shared a quote about you know dreaming being planning and Andrea Renee Johnson, who is, I'll link to their Instagram account in the show notes because I think that they share some words of pure wisdom, around, around this side of stuff around creating, you know liberatory values based practices, and they often talk about dreaming is planning, and I think that that's one of the things that I really love about doing this exercise with clients when I work with them is to actually just sit back and dream, you know, just to put aside all of the practicalities because it's easy to get bogged down in that and it's easy to edit ourselves before we even get our ideas and our thoughts and our dreams out of our head. So put those aside and dream, dream as a form of planning dreaming, it's been a form of planning so we want to give ourselves grace we don't want to bring the judgement, and we want to put aside, you know, the practicalities or the how we're going to do it, you know, and actually just create a space to drain to think big, to think about the kind of world you want to see for yourself for human for other humans, and particularly for the humans you work with. So, do you have a vision or a big picture dream in your business?

Do you have one for the humans you want to work with. So, when I am working with. When I think about my work that I've done with women around their relationship with food my big picture dream. My vision for those humans is to have a relationship with food that allows them connection to food and themselves, and basically creating a space for a relationship with food with their body and ultimately with themselves in a space to have a connection to themselves, and that's my big picture vision for the humans I work with, when I'm working with women around their relationship with food. for dietitians my big picture vision is to create a space where all dietitians can show up as themselves to create a profession where dietitians can show up as themselves, to work with the humans that they want to work with. And you know I really have a vision for dietetics of us, creating a values driven profession, a values driven space trauma informed, you know there's so many things that I that I have a big vision for but mostly it's around, dietitians, you know, being allowed to be humans and showing up as their full authentic self, in their businesses, and in their work, and insert your profession in here if you happen to be one of the non dietitians, listening along.

What is What do you want to, think about the humans that you work with or that you want to work with in your business, maybe it's your current business or your someday business, and what's the big picture vision you have for them. What's the dream you know and you can ask yourself questions around well what, what happens now and how do I want it to be different. so if you know if you find it hard to think about it, without, you know, being super practical, you know going into that like the what's like the the how of how we get them there and you were thinking of that point we want them to be or the space we want them to move into for themselves in their own lives. So thinking about well what is it, what happens for them now and how do you want that to be different. What are the things that you wish weren't causing them stress or causing them, discomfort, or whatever it might be, what would you, would you change you know. think about conversations you've had with these humans if you've been working with them already, You know what are the things that they're stuck on what are the things that would really make a difference. And then sometimes it's the initial kind of things we can think of are the really like, you know potentially the thing that you are you working with in the clinic so let's just use gut health, for example. So let's say one of the things that you want to support those humans on is, is having less symptoms, or having their symptoms impact on their life less so that's sort of like the first step, and why and then what you can do here to go a bit deeper to get that big picture vision is think about well why is that important. Why is that important for them. So it might be around improving their quality of life, it might be around, you know, supporting humans to have to be able to eat in a way that you know where they're not feeling stressed out about the symptoms they have so to be able to build that connection to food and connection to their body. Maybe that's your big picture vision. So you might start out by just thinking about, like I said, What is the problem there, or what is the the issue that they, as they see it, or what you come across, and how would you like it to be different, how would they like it to be different and how would you like to support them towards something that is different, and like it's something that you, you know, often that it's, it can be aligned. It's generally aligned with your values as well so have a bit of a think about that for the humans you want to work with.

And then we can build up a big picture vision, or big picture dream or a vision for your business, what would you love to be doing, again, don't think about the practicalities like what would you, you know, what kind of business or what way would your business be supporting people but also like what, why would you be, you know, what kind of business like, is it going to be something that you know think about like, you know 10 years ago, most people couldn't have dreamed of having an online business of that been a better concept so it might not be the particular like technical I want an online business but 13 years ago, in 2000, oh what are we in. .., sorry, sorry, I can't even count. So 11 years ago, I had to wrap up my first business that I had, Because I was moving interstate, and my business was a mobile based nutrition service here in, just in Canberra, and because I was moving into state my business worked was very heavily leveraged in relationships and I talk about that because I think it's really important for businesses, and that is how I've always run my businesses, and so I was moving interstate, and I didn't have the relationships for the referral networks. I didn't really know the space so running something like a mobile business wasn't, you know achievable and moving into state and plus trying to move my business at the same time just didn't really feel, it felt more stressful. So what I did was I closed my business down, and I went back to work for in community and community health, and what I what I made a resolution or a decision then was that the next time I built my business and it was the next time because I knew that that is where I wanted to be because I loved working for myself, was that I was going to build a business that was not location specific that gave me freedom and flexibility a business that I would never have to close down or, or, you know stop doing just because I had moved location, and in that time online business, you know 2010 was very new and the idea of online health was super super new and so I couldn't, you know, to envisage where it might go, I thought that that's where things would go but basically my big picture dream or vision for my business was one that was flexible, geographically, you know, non location specific I suppose, and allowed freedom and allowed me and allowed autonomy and so they, that was my big picture vision for for my business, you know, 11 years ago for the business that the next business that I knew that I wanted to move into. And that is what I've worked towards with my business efforts since, and how I've done that's changed so like I started out doing like group programmes online and then I sort of shifted into doing a mixture of group and one on one for women in their relationship with food and now I'm sort of shifting to focus I still do a little bit of that work, but I'm shifting to focus more on working with dietitians, because that is where things have changed for me. so how you do it might change and it might morph that having that big picture vision for your business like what is it that you want to enable for you, and something that can be helpful to do either in tandem or even before you think about your big picture vision for your business is thinking about that big picture vision for your life like what kind of life and lifestyle and what's your ideal kind of life and day look like, because that can really help you to shape then what is your big picture vision for your dream for me like I said, I love that flexibility I love freedom, and i love nothing more now than on a day when the sun is shining to go to put the work to the side and go out in the garden and really take advantage of it being sunny, and then pick the work up the next day so that's the kind of life, you know, that's just one thing I want I want flexibility I have young children I've got three kids under seven years old so I want flexibility to be, you know, be here for them as well I want flexibility to be able to be here for school holidays and things like that so I want, so that those things about how I want my life to be also shaped my business so that very much ties into my big picture vision that I have for my business which is a business that supports me to live the life I want to live basically, which is around that freedom and flexibility of work, being able to mostly have work and tasks that I can do anywhere that I can pause, if I need to that I can you know take time to go out into the garden, I'm not in a clinic somewhere you know half an hour away from my house. I'm at home I can step out into the garden. Currently, as I'm recording this podcast my baby's upstairs asleep, hopefully he doesn't call out. And you know so it's it's true flexibility around how I run my business to support the life I want to live. so I do think that sometimes it's good to get really clear on your big picture vision and dream for your life, either in tandem to or in advance of thinking about that big picture vision for your business.

And the truth is all three of these big picture visions and dreams they interlink because they're all supporting each other. So if you've got a vision for, you know, the humans you want to work with, then that does shape the vision you have for the business that you want to run, you know, if you want to support people around a certain, certain thing like maybe that that needs to be and that means that your business is going to be run in a certain way that then supports the lifestyle that you want to be living or the life that you want to move towards. And so, having that big picture vision and the vision and the big picture dream for your life and the lifestyle that you want to be having is also something that is so worth taking time on and really I think is should be should, no I don't like to use that word, really I think when we have a big picture vision for our life. The dream of, you know, the goal of what kind of life you want to be living. And we use that to make choices around our business, then we create a business, a truly human centred business where you as a human is centred in the business from the very start, not kind of like, I'll get the business up and running and then I'll take care of my needs. And you know, then I'll then I'll prioritise my rest and things like that, you know start how you mean to go on. Absolutely at the start of a business sometimes you might work a little work a little bit differently, you know, you might need to take time to you know really get clear on what your no's are, where you want to say no, you know you might take time to get clear on what kind of work you like to do so you might practice and try out a few things first and so yes absolutely how you run your business may not be the endpoint iteration, and of course we change and grow and learn and unlearn so it will change over time, but I think knowing what kind of life and lifestyle you want to live and move towards if you don't know that I think that that's something that's good to start with really you can think about what your ideal day is what your ideal week would look like, you know how many days would you work in a week. And that can help to shape your vision for your business because if you only want to work two hours or two days a week or if you only want to work a couple of hours each day, which is me like I don't want to work full time, I only want my work to be you know the majority of my work to be in school hours. I want it to be flexible, I want to, you know, like I said drop everything and go out into the garden, I want to have days where if I don't look at my email or my social media account, or, you know, if I don't look at like it's not like a dropping the ball situation, it is inbuilt in my business. so thinking about the life that you want to live so really get clear on that, you know, And that's where it's really good to know what your values are, because that shapes the life, or you know that you want to move towards because often when we're operating under somebody else's values, and I'll link to my episode I did on whose values to give you a bit of a something else to kind of dig into there. Sometimes we can be moving towards this ideal idea of a life that's been sold to us, that is, that looks like it could be, you know the. We see it in, you know, if we think about in, you know our cultural social type things you know there's there's definitely kind of messages and programming there around what, what are the markers of successful life or the markers of a life you know that we all that we're supposed to be aspiring to. And also in the business world so if you follow any business coaches, there's definitely a type of lifestyle that sold. And I think it's about getting super clear on who's what life you want to be living, and rather than, you know, thinking that you have to emulate somebody else's idea of a successful life. And sometimes I talk about a concept of your enough. Sometimes I think that knowing what your enough points are can be really useful too so what does contentment and enough feel like you, for you, and not enough as in settling but what is what's enough. What does that feel like, what does that look like as far as, you know, financially as far as time flexibility and freedom goes.

And that can be something to think about because often we think about, or we're encouraged to think about those big, big sweeping versions of success, you know, the big house the expensive car, whatever it might be. And so I think it's about thinking about your own values and what your enough is within that value framework. So to give an example, or to give you know a bit of personal context so one of my values is around the wise use and conservation of resources for myself, my community in the environment. And so when I'm thinking about my version of success or my version of the life I want to live. There is a really big consideration for me around the environment around impact that I have and so one of my big goals or one of the things that to me is part of my ideal life and it doesn't have to necessarily appeal to everyone is around growing my own food and this is a non business example but around growing my own food, so I have. We recently purchased a home where we've got a bit more space so we've got a little bit of an orchard here, well I call it the orchard, it's like, 10 fruit trees out the front. But I've started planting other fruit trees so that's like a you know I'm prioritising my time around it so I want to be able to do that and what I know from having done it in the past. You know, growing and preserving and producing a lot of my own food is it takes time, and takes energy. And so for me because I know that's part of my ideal life, I need to create, for me, a business that supports that. So, while for some people the idea of and I post on an Instagram the other day staying up, you know, staying up late on a Friday night to bake your bread for the weekend ahead. Doesn't sound like everyone's idea of a party for me, that is contentment, that is enough. That's that finding that point, because it is what it's what supports my overall values and the goals and the life I want to be living in so it's just a one example of values based like thinking about those values and how they shape your life, your ideal version of the life you want to be living and then how important it is to create a business that supports that, because again if I created a business where I was in a clinic from X hours to X hours where I was off, like you know away from the home, then being able to find the time or prioritise that time to get into the garden, to preserve things to bake bread to make my own things from scratch, would be a lot harder, and would add stress and busy-ness to my life that I absolutely do not want. And so both of those for me work together so I really encourage you to think about how yours works together. What's the big picture vision you have for the humans you want to work with what's the big picture vision you have for you and your life, the values based life that you want to be living. And what's the big picture you have for your business and how those two things support each other. So, I'll leave you with that. I thought this was going to be like a really short one when I first started out i was like oh I'm after, I'm on point two by like under five minutes. But here we are cracking 20 minutes so I'm going to wrap it up. I really love to hear from you. When you listen to this episode, come over to the dietitian values @dietitianvalues on Instagram and share in the comment your big picture vision for the humans you want to work with for your business and for you and your life if you're a bit shy of course DM me but please I would love to hear where you're at with it right now and remember it doesn't have to be the end point, it can change over time. And don't forget to bring that self compassion versus judgement when you're going through these processes. Okay, I'm super keen to hear from you if you if this resonated with you, and you think there's somebody else in your life that would benefit, please feel free to share, subscribe, if you don't want to miss an episode of course like follow whatever you want to do, but what the main thing I would really love for you to do if you just want to take one action from this is to come and share with me your big picture vision, your big picture dream. And I look forward to hearing from you and continuing the conversation. Okay, until next time, Bye for now.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai