The hard work of pursuing vision and staying connected to inspiration

Last week was a roller coaster. Monday, I felt totally lost, untethered, deflated. Tuesday, I felt refreshed, reconnected, and like my work had a purpose.

How do you stay connected to your vision? How do you keep yourself from careening off the side of the cliff?

Many of us are not connected… we’re just moving through life, going through the motions. Going to work, paying our bills, cleaning the kitchen. If you are running a small business, it’s not that different. There are invoices, buildings, posts, people, orders that have their own demands, their own rhythms.

When you are starting a business – doing the hard work of building – you HAVE to stay connected to the source. Whether that source is an inspiration, an idea, a connection to community, an act of service, or a vision for a better world.

If you don’t stay connected you. will. fly. away.

Without that inspiration, the daily chaos and turbulence will eat you alive. It will leave you feeling stupid and small and asking “what the hell am I doing?”

But when you are rooted in the source, you see it everywhere. You can connect the small moments of each day and see a picture of yourself moving through it and making real progress.

Pursuing a vision is non-linear; it’s hard to follow the steps in order because big stuff comes up around every corner. And a lot of work happens under the surface. But even in physical building, the first steps are to clear a plot, dig a big hole, and lay a foundation. As soon as the framing goes up, you forget about the foundation – but everything is built on top of those critical first steps.

We must be patient, stay focused, and take each step as it comes. Hard days happen and when they’re really hard, you might have to hunker down and just wait. But you focus that next day on reconnecting with your source. You can’t do this alone. You can’t barrel through it. You must be acutely attuned.

Vision is bigger than you. Let it be.