140. Create Your Vision and Pursue it Boldly (CEO Summer School)
Are you stuck trying to figure out what your business vision should look like? Maybe you know what you want but are unsure how to take action toward it. In today’s episode, I’m sharing truth number two from my CEO Summer School series: "What I Know for Sure." In order to grow a thriving interior design business, you must have a compelling vision of where you're going and pursue it boldly.
In this episode, we’re diving into the importance of setting a clear vision for your business and how to confidently take the necessary steps toward making it a reality. We’ll talk about what it truly means to pursue your vision boldly—not just by setting goals, but by aligning your actions with your deeper purpose, even when fear or self-doubt creeps in. This truth is essential for anyone who wants to stop second-guessing their direction and start moving forward with confidence.
By the end of this episode, you’ll have a clear understanding of how to create a vision that resonates with who you are and what you truly want to build. I’ll also share ways to overcome the obstacles that might arise and how to stay focused on your path.
Click here to enroll in CEO Summer School! You'll receive a dedicated email resource every other week to take what you’ve learned and apply it directly to your business.
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What You’ll Discover from this Episode:
Why having a clear vision acts like setting your GPS for both business and life decisions.
How focusing on the long game changes the types of decisions you make day to day.
The difference between moving toward what you want versus avoiding what you fear.
What it means to pursue your vision boldly and why it requires courage, not perfection.
How to use your future self as an inner mentor for wisdom and guidance.
Why believing in your outcome before you have evidence leads to more effective action.
The power of knowing your objective before starting any task, meeting, or project.
Listen to the Full Episode:
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Enroll in CEO Summer School to receive a dedicated email resource every other week to take what you’ve learned and apply it directly to your business!
Full Episode Transcript:
Hey designer, you're listening to episode 140. Today, I'm revealing truth number two in this year's CEO Summer School series. What I know for sure is that in order to grow a thriving interior design business, you must have a compelling vision of where you're going and pursue it boldly. Your vision really informs your decisions, your actions, it clarifies your priorities, and determines how you leverage your resources, both your internal resources and the resources that you have in your personal life and your business.
We're diving into what makes a great vision, how to stay the course, even among setbacks, because let's face it, they're coming, and how to create confidence in your inevitable success by leaning into your future self. This is going to be a conversation around business and life vision, and it's going to be one that you haven't heard before. I can't wait to dive in.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad to be here with you. It feels like I am finally recording this episode for you. I had intended to record it at the end of last week, and then some things happened, and I wasn't able to do that. And then I've got about an hour window right now. My daughter is at swim team that I was going to record thi,s but the software that I use for recording kept freezing, and then my microphone wasn't able to be selected in the program. So it just feels like, ah. Come on, I just want to sit down and record this for you, but I finally have it working. So I'm very excited. It's great.
And what we're doing today is I am back with the next truth in the CEO Summer School series. And before we dive into that, if you're not signed up for CEO Summer School, know that it's not too late. All you have to do is go to desiid.com/summerschool, and you can sign up for that. And if you are already enrolled and loving it, I encourage you to share it with a friend. All you have to do is send them the podcast in your app. You can link it in a text. You can tell them to get on that sign-up, so that way you can discuss it and both benefit from it.
Like I said, I had about an hour when I started trying to troubleshoot here, and time is of the essence to get back over to the pool. So we're going to dive right into it. And this is going to be a conversation, yes, around business and life vision, but also so much more than that. The truth that I want to share with you today is that in order to build a thriving interior design business, you know, the one where you love the clients you're working with, you feel financially supported, you're creatively fulfilled, you have time for yourself in and out of business. That's the kind of business we're talking about here on this podcast, and in order to create that, you really must know where you're going and pursue it boldly.
If you've heard me talk about crafting your business and life vision, I want you to for sure stick around. I'm going to be talking about it from some different angles today that I haven't shared before. And if you're newer to my teachings or haven't been around since the beginning of the podcast and you don't know what business and life vision is, no worries. I'm going to give you an overview. And then you can also go back to episode one, where you will get the full scoop.
For today's episode, I want to break this truth down into two separate parts. And that is the first part, know where you're going, and then the second part, pursue it boldly. So let's talk about the first part to begin. Know where you're going. This is the vision, not just for your business, but also for your life. Your business and life vision is something that I work with my clients on that really takes into account your professional ambitions and your personal priorities. It looks at how the two areas support each other versus working in contradiction or opposition. And allows you to intentionally decide how you're going to tend to both domains.
Without this intentionality, one definitely ends up getting the short end of the stick, and we don't want to have that happen. And sometimes we emphasize one versus the other more than others during different seasons of our lives, but we want to make intentional decisions about this.
So when I say know where you're going, you can think about your vision for your business and your life as setting your GPS. You could even think about this like a design project, designing a home. You would never, I mean, this is just so silly to think about, you'd never show up on a job site with a bunch of dirt and just a hammer, and you'd have your little bag of concrete and some wood, and you were just going to like tackle trying to build this house.
No. You would show up with a plan. You'd have a team in place. You would know where you're going, what the home was going to look like, and feel like when it's done. You know there's going to be things to troubleshoot along the way. There'll be some wobbly moments you have. And among all of that, when those things happen, when problems arise, you can point back to the vision for the project to get yourself back on track.
So this is the same with your business and life. It's the same with your vision. You know where you're going. There's different paths that will get you there. There are different obstacles you'll overcome along the way, but you have somewhere that you're pointed.
Where you eventually get to might even look a little bit different. It doesn't have to be exactly what you put in that vision, but you definitely want to decide. Because when you go by default, really just letting other people's decisions, opinions, their influences, their priorities, when they run the show, they aren't taking into account what you want. It's what they want. And we don't want to be running a business or living a life that we haven't chosen for ourselves.
The other reason why knowing where you're going is so important is because it gives you clarity. When you have that clear vision of where you're headed, it becomes so much easier to decide what your goals are going to be, what business initiatives you tackle, which ones you set aside, and say, those are not right now, or just not even for me. It gives you clarity on how you spend your time day to day and how you spend your time even outside of your business to really align with your values and what you want to do to create meaning for yourself.
It's also going to give you clarity on the type of support and the quantity of support you have in your business, the types of financial investments that you want to be making or saving for, the types of clients you work with, and even the services you offer. Without vision, it is so easy to fall into the trap of trying to recreate someone else's dream or run your business based on shoulds. It should look like this. I should do that. Those are the shoulds. We say, don't should all over yourself.
And that really goes back to that first truth that I shared, which is, there is no right way. There's the right way for you. Your vision is one important piece of determining your right way. Your right way based on your values, your capacity, your season of life, your drive that you have. And your vision orients you towards playing the long game. It puts your focus on what you're building for the future to enjoy now and to enjoy later, versus being in a really reactive mode and only looking one step in front of you.
With the many, many moving pieces and unique challenges in your interior design business, it is so easy to get bogged down in the weeds and be reactive day to day. But your success is never going to be made or broken by one day. This is one of my favorite, favorite beliefs. And I found that it's true, because what happens is long-term efforts compound. They compound over time, and that's really where your vision is being built.
When you focus on that greater picture, when you zoom out to something that encompasses what you've set out to create over maybe the next year or several years, your decisions start to make a pretty radical shift when the horizons change. The way that you are thinking about yourself and your business and the types of results that you can create will change, and it's powerful. And it's because you're more grounded in this long-game view. You're more intentional and trusting in your path forward because you can see that there is a future where it all comes together.
So what this allows you to do is it relaxes you into the process of progress, the steps that you're taking to get to that destination. If you even go back to that idea of building a home, if you think about your clients, how they'll sometimes freak out when something goes wrong on their project. But you, as the designer, have been through many, many projects, and you know that things go wrong, and you know that you figure them out, and often they come out better in the long run because of whatever happened. You come up with a creative solution, you think of something you haven't done before, you get it to work out even though you thought you couldn't work out, you know, whatever it is.
But you are the one who sees that it comes together in the future. Your client doesn't hold that, necessarily. And you do. So you're able to believe, oh yes, we're working towards this, and I can relax. I mean, I know sometimes we kind of freak out in the moment, but overall we're able to go, yep, there's a bump in the road and it's going to be okay. So that's what your vision does for you is that it gives you a horizon that you see, that you can picture.
It also helps you settle into a pace that's okay for you. Because often when we are racing towards the finish line, we end up burning ourselves out, which actually slows us down. Getting there, wherever there is for you, is not better if it's faster. What ultimately matters is that you get where you want to go. And direction is always going to be more important than speed. And knowing your direction puts your spotlight on what is going to actually move the needle forward and what you can let go of, which makes planning and implementation in your business, especially in the back end, so much simpler.
That's because you know what's going to matter in the long run, or at least you have a strong hunch or have some hunches you're willing to test, and then you make decisions that move you closer to what you want. I've been talking about this concept of know where you're going from a more zoomed out long-term game point of view, but it also is very true in your day to day, even when you sit down at your desk, when you start a meeting with a client or a team member, when you put out a piece of content, you want to know where you're going.
What's the objective from the action you're taking? What will have happened, or do you want to have happened, when this thing is complete? That's very different from saying, let's hop on a call, or I'm going to just start randomly working on things in this furniture plan, even though I don't know what the actual plan is.
You can imagine how much more effective you would be in the day-to-day if you started the mornings or tasks with clear intentions and outcomes in mind. So it works in this very zoomed-in way. So this truth that I'm sharing of “know where you're going” works in the granular, zoomed in, nitty gritty, and it also works to your benefit in this long-range view.
That's the first piece. Know where you're going. If you've never started to explore this idea and you want to create your own business and life vision, I do have a free printable journal that walks you through a set of important questions that you can answer to help paint the picture of that future that you want. And you can find that at desiid.com/vision.
Now let's talk about the second part of this truth. So the first part is know where you're going and then the second part, pursue it boldly. And you might be wondering, Desi, what do you mean by boldly? What I mean is that you are willing to show up for yourself repeatedly. That takes some courage. You're willing to take measured risks. You're willing to be courageous in deciding what you want and going after it.
This does not mean that you will never feel doubt or discouragement. That's just part of the process. When you sign up for that next level of success beyond your current reality, what you're doing essentially is you're signing up for new struggles
So I find that kind of comforting of when I'm reaching for something new and something beyond what I've ever created, I know self-doubt, I know discouragement, I know a little imposter syndrome. All those things are just bound to pop up, so they don't have to be such a problem, because I just know that they're signs that I'm moving forward in some way.
So when there's times that your vision seems like it's not going to happen, it's taking more time and effort than you thought it would. You really do have to remind yourself that if you are stretching beyond your current capabilities, it is going to seem impossible until the point where it doesn't. I have a coffee mug, actually, at our cabin that says this. It says, “it always seems impossible until it's done.”
Our brain loves to have evidence, except when we're doing something new or achieving a goal we've never achieved before, we don't have evidence. And that's really where that impossibility comes into play, is yeah, of course, it seems impossible until it doesn't. So, taking action in spite of the fact that there is doubt that your brain's telling you it's not possible, that takes bold action. You have to be bold in your approach.
The other thing is that when you decide to pursue your vision boldly, what ends up happening is you start to shift your energy and mental focus to creating what you want in the future, versus devoting your time and energy to avoiding what you don't want or what you fear. And if you think about that, if your brain is more focused on moving you towards what you want versus avoiding what you don't want, you're going to be much more likely to take action and progress along your path at a quicker rate.
Boldness to me has an element of confidence. You're taking action towards a result in the absence of proof. The proof is your belief that you choose to have in yourself and the belief that you choose to have in your capability before you have reason to think you can. If the confidence piece of this truth of pursuing your vision boldly is something that you feel like you could use some additional support with, make sure you go back to episode 23 where I talk about confidence more and specifically the two different types of confidence that you need to have to reach new goals and grow your interior design business.
You can also start to practice pursuing your vision boldly right now today by picturing your future self. Your future self is not a perfect version of you, but it is a version of you who's living your vision. And acting from the emotional fuel of believing it's done, I got there, it's happened, gives you so much more energy. It's another way that you're going to be more focused on creating what you want and creating more ease and expending less energy in the action you take to get towards that next level version of yourself.
When you access your future self, meaning you picture that version of you who has become the person who's created the vision, who has those results, you can seek wisdom and guidance from them. You can ask for advice, “Hey, how did you get there?” So essentially, this future self, this becomes a part of you that is an inner mentor that you can trust, and you can start to trust yourself and your business and the process of attaining new goals.
When you see yourself as the future self, the version of you who's achieved what you wanted, it's also so much easier to keep working, even when you encounter difficulties and moments of self-doubt. It's like what I was saying with the building project of, yep, something happens on the job site, and you know, even though it's kind of a pain in the you know what right now, you're going to get it figured out, and the house is going to get built. So it's the same thing with your vision that you're imagining on the horizon. It's the same thing as picturing your future self. You can believe in that outcome and know that if you keep going, you will get there.
The other cool thing that happens is when you believe you will become that future self and have those future results, is that you start to turn your focus into who you are being today and acting as your future self. If I have those results, what do I do today? How does that person show up in my business, in my relationships? How do they honor commitments that I've made to myself, whether that's in planning, behaviors, support I'm giving myself?
What ends up happening is that being or that way of being in the world or in your business leads to the type of doing that actually creates the results you want. So it's an internal shift that creates the external result. As I'm talking about future self, you might be thinking, okay, I'm going to be so bold as to believe that I've made it. I've gotten to that vision even when I don't have the evidence in front of me. That's delusional. I've set goals before that I haven't achieved. I said I was going to do things that I haven't done. Why would I believe anything different now?
But I would argue that it's not delusional. Sure, maybe there are things that didn't happen in the past, but you also were probably approaching those things with an entirely different mindset than what I'm suggesting here. The truth is no one can predict the future. So you don't know if you will get there. You don't know if you won't get there. It's all made up at this point. And what I do know is that when we believe in the outcome that we want to create and believe that we can do it, we take more effective action.
So one of the things that I like to remind myself of is that it takes just as much effort to not believe as it does to believe. So why not use the insights and motivation I can take from accessing my future self and use it to my benefit? Because it really does create more ease and gives you so much more perspective along the journey, because you're allowed to see solutions that the you of today simply can't see because you're so in it. And I'm just going to take it. I'm going to take that advice from my future self. I'm going to take the belief that version of me has in what I'm creating, and I'm going to be bold and believe. And I encourage you to do the same.
You could spend a bunch of time and energy telling yourself that it's not possible, that you can't have it, that you won't do it. Or you could spend that same amount of time and energy getting behind yourself, giving yourself a confidence boost, and sending you on your way. Personally, I love the second option, and I hope you do too.
That's what I've got for you today. The what I know for sure is that creating a thriving, sustainable interior design business that you actually enjoy running, one that lights you up, if you are to do that, you must know where you're going and pursue that vision boldly. If you haven't already hit the subscribe button for the podcast, make sure you do that and get yourself enrolled in CEO Summer School.
What happens when you sign up, and that's at desiid.com/summerschool, is it's just you enter your name and email, and then you'll start getting a message from me anytime one of these CEO Summer School episodes are released. And in that brief email, I share a series of quick prompts that are going to help you take what I've shared in this episode and apply it directly to you and help you really get the mindset shifts and start to take the actions that are going to align with where you want to go and what you want to create.
And if you're loving the series, please share it with a friend, leave a rating and review, or, for extra credit, you could do both. All right, I'm headed back to the pool to pick up my daughter. I'll be back next Wednesday. It's a follow-up episode to this topic with a really important nuance that you're going to want to consider in pursuing your vision. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week/
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
We're diving into what makes a great vision, how to stay the course, even among setbacks, because let's face it, they're coming, and how to create confidence in your inevitable success by leaning into your future self. This is going to be a conversation around business and life vision, and it's going to be one that you haven't heard before. I can't wait to dive in.
Welcome to The Interior Design Business CEO, the only show for designers who are ready to confidently run and grow their businesses without the stress and anxiety. If you're ready to develop a bigger vision for your interior design business, free up your time, and streamline your days for productivity and profit, you're in the right place.
I'm Desi Creswell, an award-winning interior designer and certified life and business coach. I help interior designers just like you stop feeling overwhelmed so they can build profitable businesses they love to run. Are you ready to confidently lead your business, clients, and projects? Let's go.
Hello, designer, welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad to be here with you. It feels like I am finally recording this episode for you. I had intended to record it at the end of last week, and then some things happened, and I wasn't able to do that. And then I've got about an hour window right now. My daughter is at swim team that I was going to record thi,s but the software that I use for recording kept freezing, and then my microphone wasn't able to be selected in the program. So it just feels like, ah. Come on, I just want to sit down and record this for you, but I finally have it working. So I'm very excited. It's great.
And what we're doing today is I am back with the next truth in the CEO Summer School series. And before we dive into that, if you're not signed up for CEO Summer School, know that it's not too late. All you have to do is go to desiid.com/summerschool, and you can sign up for that. And if you are already enrolled and loving it, I encourage you to share it with a friend. All you have to do is send them the podcast in your app. You can link it in a text. You can tell them to get on that sign-up, so that way you can discuss it and both benefit from it.
Like I said, I had about an hour when I started trying to troubleshoot here, and time is of the essence to get back over to the pool. So we're going to dive right into it. And this is going to be a conversation, yes, around business and life vision, but also so much more than that. The truth that I want to share with you today is that in order to build a thriving interior design business, you know, the one where you love the clients you're working with, you feel financially supported, you're creatively fulfilled, you have time for yourself in and out of business. That's the kind of business we're talking about here on this podcast, and in order to create that, you really must know where you're going and pursue it boldly.
If you've heard me talk about crafting your business and life vision, I want you to for sure stick around. I'm going to be talking about it from some different angles today that I haven't shared before. And if you're newer to my teachings or haven't been around since the beginning of the podcast and you don't know what business and life vision is, no worries. I'm going to give you an overview. And then you can also go back to episode one, where you will get the full scoop.
For today's episode, I want to break this truth down into two separate parts. And that is the first part, know where you're going, and then the second part, pursue it boldly. So let's talk about the first part to begin. Know where you're going. This is the vision, not just for your business, but also for your life. Your business and life vision is something that I work with my clients on that really takes into account your professional ambitions and your personal priorities. It looks at how the two areas support each other versus working in contradiction or opposition. And allows you to intentionally decide how you're going to tend to both domains.
Without this intentionality, one definitely ends up getting the short end of the stick, and we don't want to have that happen. And sometimes we emphasize one versus the other more than others during different seasons of our lives, but we want to make intentional decisions about this.
So when I say know where you're going, you can think about your vision for your business and your life as setting your GPS. You could even think about this like a design project, designing a home. You would never, I mean, this is just so silly to think about, you'd never show up on a job site with a bunch of dirt and just a hammer, and you'd have your little bag of concrete and some wood, and you were just going to like tackle trying to build this house.
No. You would show up with a plan. You'd have a team in place. You would know where you're going, what the home was going to look like, and feel like when it's done. You know there's going to be things to troubleshoot along the way. There'll be some wobbly moments you have. And among all of that, when those things happen, when problems arise, you can point back to the vision for the project to get yourself back on track.
So this is the same with your business and life. It's the same with your vision. You know where you're going. There's different paths that will get you there. There are different obstacles you'll overcome along the way, but you have somewhere that you're pointed.
Where you eventually get to might even look a little bit different. It doesn't have to be exactly what you put in that vision, but you definitely want to decide. Because when you go by default, really just letting other people's decisions, opinions, their influences, their priorities, when they run the show, they aren't taking into account what you want. It's what they want. And we don't want to be running a business or living a life that we haven't chosen for ourselves.
The other reason why knowing where you're going is so important is because it gives you clarity. When you have that clear vision of where you're headed, it becomes so much easier to decide what your goals are going to be, what business initiatives you tackle, which ones you set aside, and say, those are not right now, or just not even for me. It gives you clarity on how you spend your time day to day and how you spend your time even outside of your business to really align with your values and what you want to do to create meaning for yourself.
It's also going to give you clarity on the type of support and the quantity of support you have in your business, the types of financial investments that you want to be making or saving for, the types of clients you work with, and even the services you offer. Without vision, it is so easy to fall into the trap of trying to recreate someone else's dream or run your business based on shoulds. It should look like this. I should do that. Those are the shoulds. We say, don't should all over yourself.
And that really goes back to that first truth that I shared, which is, there is no right way. There's the right way for you. Your vision is one important piece of determining your right way. Your right way based on your values, your capacity, your season of life, your drive that you have. And your vision orients you towards playing the long game. It puts your focus on what you're building for the future to enjoy now and to enjoy later, versus being in a really reactive mode and only looking one step in front of you.
With the many, many moving pieces and unique challenges in your interior design business, it is so easy to get bogged down in the weeds and be reactive day to day. But your success is never going to be made or broken by one day. This is one of my favorite, favorite beliefs. And I found that it's true, because what happens is long-term efforts compound. They compound over time, and that's really where your vision is being built.
When you focus on that greater picture, when you zoom out to something that encompasses what you've set out to create over maybe the next year or several years, your decisions start to make a pretty radical shift when the horizons change. The way that you are thinking about yourself and your business and the types of results that you can create will change, and it's powerful. And it's because you're more grounded in this long-game view. You're more intentional and trusting in your path forward because you can see that there is a future where it all comes together.
So what this allows you to do is it relaxes you into the process of progress, the steps that you're taking to get to that destination. If you even go back to that idea of building a home, if you think about your clients, how they'll sometimes freak out when something goes wrong on their project. But you, as the designer, have been through many, many projects, and you know that things go wrong, and you know that you figure them out, and often they come out better in the long run because of whatever happened. You come up with a creative solution, you think of something you haven't done before, you get it to work out even though you thought you couldn't work out, you know, whatever it is.
But you are the one who sees that it comes together in the future. Your client doesn't hold that, necessarily. And you do. So you're able to believe, oh yes, we're working towards this, and I can relax. I mean, I know sometimes we kind of freak out in the moment, but overall we're able to go, yep, there's a bump in the road and it's going to be okay. So that's what your vision does for you is that it gives you a horizon that you see, that you can picture.
It also helps you settle into a pace that's okay for you. Because often when we are racing towards the finish line, we end up burning ourselves out, which actually slows us down. Getting there, wherever there is for you, is not better if it's faster. What ultimately matters is that you get where you want to go. And direction is always going to be more important than speed. And knowing your direction puts your spotlight on what is going to actually move the needle forward and what you can let go of, which makes planning and implementation in your business, especially in the back end, so much simpler.
That's because you know what's going to matter in the long run, or at least you have a strong hunch or have some hunches you're willing to test, and then you make decisions that move you closer to what you want. I've been talking about this concept of know where you're going from a more zoomed out long-term game point of view, but it also is very true in your day to day, even when you sit down at your desk, when you start a meeting with a client or a team member, when you put out a piece of content, you want to know where you're going.
What's the objective from the action you're taking? What will have happened, or do you want to have happened, when this thing is complete? That's very different from saying, let's hop on a call, or I'm going to just start randomly working on things in this furniture plan, even though I don't know what the actual plan is.
You can imagine how much more effective you would be in the day-to-day if you started the mornings or tasks with clear intentions and outcomes in mind. So it works in this very zoomed-in way. So this truth that I'm sharing of “know where you're going” works in the granular, zoomed in, nitty gritty, and it also works to your benefit in this long-range view.
That's the first piece. Know where you're going. If you've never started to explore this idea and you want to create your own business and life vision, I do have a free printable journal that walks you through a set of important questions that you can answer to help paint the picture of that future that you want. And you can find that at desiid.com/vision.
Now let's talk about the second part of this truth. So the first part is know where you're going and then the second part, pursue it boldly. And you might be wondering, Desi, what do you mean by boldly? What I mean is that you are willing to show up for yourself repeatedly. That takes some courage. You're willing to take measured risks. You're willing to be courageous in deciding what you want and going after it.
This does not mean that you will never feel doubt or discouragement. That's just part of the process. When you sign up for that next level of success beyond your current reality, what you're doing essentially is you're signing up for new struggles
So I find that kind of comforting of when I'm reaching for something new and something beyond what I've ever created, I know self-doubt, I know discouragement, I know a little imposter syndrome. All those things are just bound to pop up, so they don't have to be such a problem, because I just know that they're signs that I'm moving forward in some way.
So when there's times that your vision seems like it's not going to happen, it's taking more time and effort than you thought it would. You really do have to remind yourself that if you are stretching beyond your current capabilities, it is going to seem impossible until the point where it doesn't. I have a coffee mug, actually, at our cabin that says this. It says, “it always seems impossible until it's done.”
Our brain loves to have evidence, except when we're doing something new or achieving a goal we've never achieved before, we don't have evidence. And that's really where that impossibility comes into play, is yeah, of course, it seems impossible until it doesn't. So, taking action in spite of the fact that there is doubt that your brain's telling you it's not possible, that takes bold action. You have to be bold in your approach.
The other thing is that when you decide to pursue your vision boldly, what ends up happening is you start to shift your energy and mental focus to creating what you want in the future, versus devoting your time and energy to avoiding what you don't want or what you fear. And if you think about that, if your brain is more focused on moving you towards what you want versus avoiding what you don't want, you're going to be much more likely to take action and progress along your path at a quicker rate.
Boldness to me has an element of confidence. You're taking action towards a result in the absence of proof. The proof is your belief that you choose to have in yourself and the belief that you choose to have in your capability before you have reason to think you can. If the confidence piece of this truth of pursuing your vision boldly is something that you feel like you could use some additional support with, make sure you go back to episode 23 where I talk about confidence more and specifically the two different types of confidence that you need to have to reach new goals and grow your interior design business.
You can also start to practice pursuing your vision boldly right now today by picturing your future self. Your future self is not a perfect version of you, but it is a version of you who's living your vision. And acting from the emotional fuel of believing it's done, I got there, it's happened, gives you so much more energy. It's another way that you're going to be more focused on creating what you want and creating more ease and expending less energy in the action you take to get towards that next level version of yourself.
When you access your future self, meaning you picture that version of you who has become the person who's created the vision, who has those results, you can seek wisdom and guidance from them. You can ask for advice, “Hey, how did you get there?” So essentially, this future self, this becomes a part of you that is an inner mentor that you can trust, and you can start to trust yourself and your business and the process of attaining new goals.
When you see yourself as the future self, the version of you who's achieved what you wanted, it's also so much easier to keep working, even when you encounter difficulties and moments of self-doubt. It's like what I was saying with the building project of, yep, something happens on the job site, and you know, even though it's kind of a pain in the you know what right now, you're going to get it figured out, and the house is going to get built. So it's the same thing with your vision that you're imagining on the horizon. It's the same thing as picturing your future self. You can believe in that outcome and know that if you keep going, you will get there.
The other cool thing that happens is when you believe you will become that future self and have those future results, is that you start to turn your focus into who you are being today and acting as your future self. If I have those results, what do I do today? How does that person show up in my business, in my relationships? How do they honor commitments that I've made to myself, whether that's in planning, behaviors, support I'm giving myself?
What ends up happening is that being or that way of being in the world or in your business leads to the type of doing that actually creates the results you want. So it's an internal shift that creates the external result. As I'm talking about future self, you might be thinking, okay, I'm going to be so bold as to believe that I've made it. I've gotten to that vision even when I don't have the evidence in front of me. That's delusional. I've set goals before that I haven't achieved. I said I was going to do things that I haven't done. Why would I believe anything different now?
But I would argue that it's not delusional. Sure, maybe there are things that didn't happen in the past, but you also were probably approaching those things with an entirely different mindset than what I'm suggesting here. The truth is no one can predict the future. So you don't know if you will get there. You don't know if you won't get there. It's all made up at this point. And what I do know is that when we believe in the outcome that we want to create and believe that we can do it, we take more effective action.
So one of the things that I like to remind myself of is that it takes just as much effort to not believe as it does to believe. So why not use the insights and motivation I can take from accessing my future self and use it to my benefit? Because it really does create more ease and gives you so much more perspective along the journey, because you're allowed to see solutions that the you of today simply can't see because you're so in it. And I'm just going to take it. I'm going to take that advice from my future self. I'm going to take the belief that version of me has in what I'm creating, and I'm going to be bold and believe. And I encourage you to do the same.
You could spend a bunch of time and energy telling yourself that it's not possible, that you can't have it, that you won't do it. Or you could spend that same amount of time and energy getting behind yourself, giving yourself a confidence boost, and sending you on your way. Personally, I love the second option, and I hope you do too.
That's what I've got for you today. The what I know for sure is that creating a thriving, sustainable interior design business that you actually enjoy running, one that lights you up, if you are to do that, you must know where you're going and pursue that vision boldly. If you haven't already hit the subscribe button for the podcast, make sure you do that and get yourself enrolled in CEO Summer School.
What happens when you sign up, and that's at desiid.com/summerschool, is it's just you enter your name and email, and then you'll start getting a message from me anytime one of these CEO Summer School episodes are released. And in that brief email, I share a series of quick prompts that are going to help you take what I've shared in this episode and apply it directly to you and help you really get the mindset shifts and start to take the actions that are going to align with where you want to go and what you want to create.
And if you're loving the series, please share it with a friend, leave a rating and review, or, for extra credit, you could do both. All right, I'm headed back to the pool to pick up my daughter. I'll be back next Wednesday. It's a follow-up episode to this topic with a really important nuance that you're going to want to consider in pursuing your vision. Until then, I'm wishing you a beautiful week/
Thanks for joining me for this week's episode of The Interior Design Business CEO. If you want more tips, tools and strategies visit DesiCreswell.com, where you’ll get immediate access to a variety of free resources to help you take what you learn on the podcast and put it into action. And if you love what you’re hearing, be sure to rate, review, and follow the show wherever you listen to podcasts to ensure you never miss an episode. I’ll talk to you next week.
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