Layered Heart of Emotions: Naming and Claiming Our Feelings

by Joyce Wycoff and Lynne Snead

"Emotion is the chief source of all becoming-conscious. 

There can be no transforming of darkness into light 

and of apathy into movement 

without emotion." 

— Carl Jung

Elementary science class told us there are 206 bones in our bodies, 26 of which are in our feet. That information was generally accompanied by a basic overview of the various body parts, organs, and systems. However, little was said about emotions, and it wasn’t until 2017 that researchers identified 27 different emotions and clumped them into six basic types: 

Happiness

Sadness

Fear

Disgust

Anger

Surprise

Hundreds, if not thousands, of charts and wheels have been created in an attempt to clarify an apparently endless number of more nuanced descriptions of emotions. 

One might ask “Why?”

The work of Candace Pert, the scientist who discovered the opioid receptor and the idea that the molecules of emotions are our subconscious body, was a wake-up call to the importance of emotions and understanding their effect on our well-being. Since then, a lot of research has confirmed the power of naming our emotions. The ability to name our feelings makes us more aware of them, reduces their intensity, and gives us more power to handle them and the behaviors they stimulate.

In an article published by Six Seconds, the Emotional Intelligence Network, 

Michael Miller states, 

“Naming emotions seems to bridge the gap between thoughts and feelings. 

The step from “I am this…” to “I am feeling this…”, or even, 

“Michael is feeling this…” means that we are not that emotion exclusively.”

As we approached the section of Gratitude Mojo journal devoted to emotions, we were looking for simple ways to “name and claim” our emotions. Joyce repurposed a bracelet to help her learn more about her emotional territory, however, it didn’t make sense to include a bracelet with every journal, especially since it seems like this territory varies for everyone. Plus the bracelet didn’t offer a way to reflect intensity of feelings nor our ability to express them and choose appropriate behaviors.

The longer we looked at the complicated wheels and charts related to feelings, the more we wanted something different, more useful, more engaging. One day as Joyce was writing in her journal, she gazed out the window at the cold, blustery and rainy day. Against that wintery backdrop, a stained glass heart stood out, bright and beautiful. 

As she was pulled deeper and deeper into its layers, a metaphor emerged, each bright layer representing variations of comfort and vulnerability. Clearly, expression of some emotions is easier than others; some are closer to the surface, others much deeper in our core, seldom revealed and sometimes hidden even from ourselves. Exploring those layers of expression, could bring us greater understanding of those lesser understood layers of ourselves.

Most of us are comfortable expressing happiness but less willing to express feelings of insecurity. We may easily express irritation while withholding the hurt feelings that come when we feel unseen or unheard. Expressing some fears, such as the fear of spiders or heights, is common and often a source of amusement, others such as the fear of abandonment or the fear of intimacy are generally much more difficult to explore and express.

The stained glass Layered Heart offers a simple metaphoric guide to exploring your own emotional territory, a never-ending journey revealing some of the infinite and wondrous layers of your own being. An overview of the layers with a few suggestions are offered below and in the Gratitude Mojo journal there is an accompanying section to further help you develop your feelings and a gratitude for all they do to make us who we are. 

Also included below is a feelings chart to help you find names for some of your feelings.

Outer layer: The aqua and purple triangles are what you easily show to the world. A combination of light and dark, you could look at these as the feelings that are close to the surface, both positive and negative. Typically this layer includes, happiness, surprise, satisfaction… irritation, worry, moodiness.

What emotions would you associate with this layer?

Outer layer 2nd: The red dots and yellow-green oblongs layer is another dual layer that reminds us that emotions are both positive and negative. Typical emotions in this slightly reserved layer might include: joy, gratitude, contentment … disappointed, blue, anxious.

What emotions would you associate with this layer?

Outer layer 3rd: The mottled, crystal layer is buried a bit deeper but still contains a mix of positive and negative, although positive emotions are easier to express since they are more socially acceptable. Typical feelings here might include: pride, tenderness, satisfied … mad, frightened, regretful.

What emotions would you associate with this layer?

Inner layer 2nd: The turquoise layer deeper in your core is where negative emotions are being held down and there is fear of expressing positive emotions except to trusted others. Typical feelings here might include: love, excitement, elation … anger, grief, shock.

What emotions would you associate with this layer?

Inner core: The red core of your heart is vulnerable. It holds the emotions only revealed when you feel safe. Typical emotions here are shame, abandonment, rejection, betrayal, hopelessness, fear of being visible.

What emotions would you associate with this layer?

Emotions chart from Happier Human 

We hope this process helps you explore the deeper emotions of your self and would love to hear your feedback in the comments section.

For more about how to get the Gratitude Mojo journal, email info@gratitudemojo.com.

Special thanks to Rodney Meador who created the stained glass heart and welcomed me on my first day at the Morro Bay Gallery and asked if I would trade art with him. I did so gladly and it became one of my treasures that made the cut in every downsizing that followed. Little did I know it would become a key that unlocked a mystery many years later. Thank you, Rodney!

DIYW: Gratitude Practice for Photographers

“Everything is a gift.”

— David Steindl-Rast

There aren’t many things in life which everyone agrees on anymore … “gratitude is good” seems to be one of the few left. Over the past two decades, numerous studies have shown that expressing gratitude makes us happier, healthier, more likely to succeed, and more resilient. If there were such a thing as a panacea, gratitude might be it.

However, all of these studies were based on doing something to express gratitude … whether it was writing a note to someone who helped you, writing in a journal (even once a week), or saying thanks at the dinner table. Practicing gratitude is the key to unlocking dopamine and serotonin, the “feel good” hormones that produce positive effects.

In order to make gratitude a regular practice, it’s important to integrate it into your life in a way that makes it enjoyable. No one needs another chore to make us feel bad or guilty about not doing it. So, how can you DIYW (Do It Your Way for those of us over a certain age)?

Link it to something you already enjoy.

I’m a photographer and love looking at past photos or having a reason to go out and shoot something new and interesting. Here’s one way I’ve linked photography to my gratitude practice.

Take or find a photo of an interesting scene then find all the things you can be grateful for in that scene. Try to find 3–5 for each scene.

Sparks Marina, Reno, Nevada

My gratitudes:

• I am grateful to have had this beautiful place to walk when I was in Reno … who even knew that Reno had a Marina? … and for the incredible day and light that made this photo possible.
• I’m grateful for reflections that turn ordinary scenes into works of art.
• I am grateful for color that makes my heart leap as nature displays itself as a master colorist.
• I am grateful for my fellow walkers enjoying the beauty of the day.

Arkansas ice storm 2009

I wasn’t particularly grateful when I took this photo as it destroyed so many beautiful trees and shut power down for ten days. However, when I looked at it later, I was grateful the beauty and the memory.

My gratitudes:

• I am grateful for the frozen beauty of the morning glistening against the passing ice storm.
• I am grateful for trees hardy enough to withstand Nature’s icy fingers.
• I am grateful that I had time to enjoy the beauty of the Bradford pear trees which lined our driveway before they were lost to this ferocious ice storm.
• I am grateful to have a warm place to sleep even when the weather is treacherous.
• I am grateful that I had family who took us in when our power went out for ten days.

Maggi on Thanksgiving at Costco

This is Maggi, my dancing inspiration spirit guide. In search of indulgence with a non-vegan pie after a long day of trying to be “good,” we headed off to a mostly empty Costco where she terrorized the few shoppers in the store and cackled all the way. It’s an especially sweet memory since she died a few months later.

My gratitudes:

• I’m so grateful we got to spend Thanksgiving together.
• I am grateful that Maggi was part of my life.
• I am grateful for friends who always make me laugh.
• I am grateful for friends who expand my Universe and add to my wisdom.
• I am grateful for Maggi who taught me how to meet death, still laughing all the way.

Click here.

As I’ve put these together, I’ve decided to create a personal photo book to be called My Gratitudes, Volume 1. If you decide to try this, please leave a comment below.

Gratitude Mojo: My gift to the world

I am water and stardust

walking through day

treading on earth

receiving a cedar branch

receiving belonging.

watching

sunlight make sugar

in the graceful, bright

Ponderosa needles.

watching a bee

gather nectar

in a yellow flower.

me witnessing him

he witnessing me

time is not

what the world wants.

it wants my attention,

my devoted,

passionate

attention.

--Joyce Wycoff

Breakups can be positive emotional change agents

 "Discovering the truth about ourselves 

is a lifetime's work, but worth the effort." 

-- Fred Rogers

by Joyce Wycoff

It’s common …

    - words said

    - actions taken

    - feelings hurt

    - anger sparked.

The particular details of my breakup aren’t all that interesting nor unusual. A 30-year friendship blew up in a lightning strike of stress, misunderstanding, and insecurities, leaving a burned out shell in an empty field.

My reaction was a spiraling whirlwind of emotions: disbelief, anger, hurt, abandonment, sadness, and rejection as I wanted to lash out, shut down, wallow in self-pity, and hurt her back. Another friend has been coaching me on recognizing and naming my emotions. Suddenly, I was flooded with a whole dictionary of them.

I proceeded to a self-satisfying round of rehashing and re-storying the whole precipitating event, building up my sense of righteousness and driving my stake deeper into moral high ground. I wrote mental letters defending myself, spun spiteful fantasies, imagined future groveling on her part, which, in my fairy princess mode, I would either accept or reject with a simple wave of my wand as I flitted off to other sky castles.

Fortunately, I also took more productive action by writing in my gratitude journal. Gratitude Mojo, the gratitude journal a friend and I are creating and using as we continue along this journey, has what we call “dot pages,” blank, dotted pages with nothing other than an inspiring quote on them. I began to fill up dot pages with mindmaps and lists focusing on what happened and our history together.

"Everything is a gift!"

-- David Steindl-Rast

I put a virtual “Everything is a gift!” sticker on it, gave myself a gold star for being enlightened, and felt better. I thought I was done. Wrong.

Rehashing the past and re-storying the future continued. I definitely wasn’t being attentive to the present moment and soon realized there were old wounds being poked. My standard way of dealing with emotions and my emotional history was to stuff them in the closet and turn to “doing” … writing, researching, planning … escaping.

However, every day, Gratitude Mojo asked me the same question: what am I grateful for? and waited for an answer … those blank spaces just sitting there patiently awaiting my response. And every day for weeks, I responded with things outside the wound. My life is amazing and there are a zillion things to be grateful for. I thought expressing gratitude for my beautiful life would make the hurt go away.

While it did dampen intensity, there was still this black hole sucking energy into its center. My imagination kept creating future stories … possible apologies, potential reconnections, dramatic scenes of triumph and payback.

As Leonard Cohen says so beautifully, “There is a crack in everything; that’s how the light gets in.” One day, with about an hour and a half of driving in front of me, a bit of light peeked through a crack as I turned on a tape of Candace Pert talking about the molecules of emotion. Candace was the scientist who discovered the opiate receptor as a graduate student and went on to posit that the body is our subconscious mind. What I heard on that tape was that emotions are real; they are part of the soup that runs our body. We need to pay attention to them.

This wasn’t the first time I had heard this, of course; I had read her book Molecules of Emotion decades before. On this day however, the message struck a new chord and pulled me into thinking about emotions, my emotions, and how their dance around this drama with my friend were binding me to a host of negative emotions. No wonder I was suddenly craving sugar.

It challenged me to think more deeply about my history, my emotional history, and its role in this conflict. Out of that struggle, I began to believe that the gratitude journal needed to include information and space for regularly exploring our emotions, these critically important pieces of our being.

So, a new page was developed and I began to use it and see this breakup, and my friend, as change agents in my life, giving me a chance to re-examine, and possibly heal, a wound from childhood.

Years ago I had created an intention bracelet with six major beads, so I turned it into an artifact to help me focus on and understand which emotions were in play whenever something new came up. Today, while writing in my gratitude journal I realized that my feelings had shifted.

Rather than focusing on proving myself right, I reconnected with my long history with this friend and just wanted to feel compassion for what she was going through (she had recently lost her husband) and leave the door open to whatever future direction our friendship might take.

At the same time, I am committed to befriending myself with compassion and not burying my emotions for the sake of keeping someone else happy or maintaining “peace.”

I know the journey isn’t over, however, some lessons are already clear:

    - it doesn’t matter who started the drama.

    - the fodder for the fire of conflict builds up over time like forest undergrowth, waiting for the spark which becomes a wildfire. Honest, open conversation is relationship maintenance, cleaning away the flammable debris.

    - emotions are in play whether or not we want them to be. The actions we take, however, are choices we make and are best made on the basis of what we truly value.

    - people change, life circumstances change, someone else’s actions are not about me and I should not take them personally.

Positive Action Possibilities

Possible ways out of rehashing or ruminating are offered by Linda Wasmer Andrews in an article published by EverydayHealth.com. She suggests distracting yourself, stating that even eight minutes of distraction can break the cycle and lift your mood. Try physical activity (my favorite is dancing around the house to music with an intense beat), hobbies, or any form of play. You could also brainstorm small steps to get past whatever you’re stuck on … or write your gratitudes in your gratitude journal!

Click here.

As for me, I will most likely need to read this article more than once as I continue to learn the lessons my emotions offer me.

Gratitude Mojo is the new, advanced journal for gratitude practice which takes you even deeper into the amazing gifts of gratitude. 

Gratitude Miracles, the 5-minute journal that could change everything! is available at amazon.com. Click Here.

Reference: 

“Overthinking? It Could Be Depressing You,” 

Linda Wasmer Andrews November 14, 2017

Gratitude Journaling: 12 ways this practice transforms your life

Lynne Snead's Gratitude Spot

If you’re not keeping a gratitude journal yet, maybe these snippets from scientists and leading thinkers and publications will jump start your practice. There could easily have been 100 snippets here … but the point isn’t to read about keeping a gratitude journal … the benefits only come when you DO it.

In 2016, the Gratitude Miracles Journal grew out of Joyce Wycoff's personal intention to practice gratitude in a way that combined all the science with the easiest, fastest way to embody gratitude. Available on amazon.com.

In early 2021, Joyce joined forces with her co-author Lynne Snead to take gratitude journaling to the next step and Gratitude Mojo was born as a bigger, better way to get the amazing benefits of this practice.

Click here.

The BIG One: Be Happier. The best way to reap the benefits of gratitude is to notice new things you’re grateful for every day. Gratitude journaling works because it slowly changes the way we perceive situations by adjusting what we focus on. While you might always be thankful for your great family, just writing “I’m grateful for my family” week after week doesn’t keep your brain on alert for fresh grateful moments. Get specific … Read more here: The Science Behind Gratitude

Gratitude Makes You Love Your Life. When you live your life in gratitude, you maintain an awareness of all things that are good in your life and focus less on what’s not working. When you acknowledge what is going right in your life, it’s impossible to become stuck in negativity. Gratitude keeps you thankful, happier, and more positive. Read more here: 6 Ways to Love Your Life More.

Attract More Good Stuff. Appreciation is one of the highest emotional states you can experience. When you cultivate gratitude, you’re able to feel true joy and contentment, no matter what you have or don’t have in your life. And since the Law of Attraction states that like attracts like, when you’re grateful for what you already have, you will naturally attract more for which you can be grateful. Read more here: 6 Daily Gratitude Habits

Be Healthier. Studies have shown that people who regularly practice feeling thankful have a leg up when it comes to their health. Robert Emmons, a psychology professor at the University of California at Davis, has been a leading researcher in this growing field, termed “positive psychology.” His research has found that those who adopt an “attitude of gratitude” as a permanent state of mind experience many health benefits. Read more here: A Dose of Gratitude

Greater Success. Science tells us that people who are thankful for what they have are happier and reach their goals with greater ease. Your future health and happiness depends largely on the thoughts you think today. So each moment of every day is an opportunity to turn your thinking around, thereby helping or hindering your ability to think and feel more positively in the very next moment. Starting and/or ending each day by thinking of something you're grateful for is one way to keep your mind on the right track. Read more here: The Many Benefits of Expressing and Receiving Gratitude

Higher Energy. In adults with neuromuscular disease, a 21-day gratitude intervention led to higher energy, more positive moods, a greater sense of connectedness with others, more optimistic ratings of their lives, better sleep duration, and better sleep quality (Emmons). Read more here: The Benefits of Adding Gratitude to Your Attitude.

Teaches Self-Discipline. One of the biggest struggles writers deal with is the ability to sit down and put pen to paper, even when they don’t feel like it. Starting off slow makes it easier. A gratitude journal can have a double-whammy effect in this case, teaching you to be thankful for what you have while also making you learn to discipline yourself to do a task for a few minutes at a time. It’s a great way to learn self control for any aspect of your life.

Read more here: Tracking the Benefits of a Gratitude Journal

Improves Psychological Health. Gratitude reduces a multitude of toxic emotions, ranging from envy and resentment to frustration and regret. Robert A. Emmons, Ph.D., a leading gratitude researcher, has conducted multiple studies on the link between gratitude and well-being. His research confirms that gratitude effectively increases happiness and reduces depression. Read more here: 7 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude

Less Physical Pain. Indeed, it seems there are few conditions or examples in which gratitude doesn’t appear to have a positive effect. A psychologist from the University of Birmingham noted in 2013 that the “list of potential benefits is almost endless: fewer intellectual biases, more effective learning strategies, more helpfulness towards others, raised self-confidence, better work attitude, strengthened resiliency, less physical pain, improved health, and longevity.” Read more here: 5 Scientifically Proven Benefits of Gratitude

Makes People Like Us. A few minutes a day with your gratitude journal can increase your long-term well-being by more than 10 percent.^a1,a2,a3 That’s the same impact as doubling your income! Read more here: 31 Benefits of Gratitude

Sleep Better. Greater Good reports ... perhaps the most popular practice is to keep a “gratitude journal.” As we’ve reported many times over the years, studies have traced a range of impressive benefits to the simple act of writing down the things for which we’re grateful—benefits including better sleep, fewer symptoms of illness, and more happiness among adults and kids alike. We’ve even launched our own digital gratitude journal, Thnx4.org, here on . Read more here: Tips for Keeping a Gratitude Journal

Ability to Focus Improves. In today’s society, keeping a gratitude journal is a must for all up and coming Career Girls. In her latest book Thrive, author (and powerhouse) Arianna Huffington explains the huge role her gratitude journal had in propelling her to success, and honestly, it makes perfect sense. Read more here: Gratitude Journal - First Step to Success

Thought Leader: David Steindl-Rast

Click for Ted Talk: Want to be happy? Be grateful.

“The root of joy is gratefulness...It is not joy that makes us grateful; it is gratitude that makes us joyful.”

Renowned spiritual leader and Benedictine monk, Brother David Steindl-Rast trained for 12 years in the Benedictine monastic tradition before receiving permission to practice Zen withBuddhist masters. He went on to become a postdoctoral fellow at Cornell, where he was the first Roman Catholic to hold the Thorpe Lectureship, and co-founded the Center for Spiritual Studies, as well as gratefulness.org.

Click here.

Notes  from talk:

Grateful living. Every moment is a gift. We haven’t earned it, we haven’t bought it but it is the most valuable thing that could be given to us. This moment is a gift. The gift within this gift is the opportunity. Opportunity is the gift within every gift. Every moment is a new gift offering a new opportunity.

“Does that mean we can be grateful for everything? Certainly not! We can not be grateful for violence, for war, for oppression, for exploitation. On a personal level, we cannot be grateful for the loss of a friend, for unfaithfulness, for bereavement. But, I didn’t say we can be grateful for everything. I said we can be grateful for every given moment, for the opportunity."

“We can arise to the opportunity that is given to us. When a difficult thing is occurs to us, it’s a challenge to rise to that opportunity. And we can rise to it by learning something, which is sometimes painful."

“And if we fail, we always get another opportunity. That is the wonderful richness of life."

"How can we find a method that will harness this? There is a very simple method: stop, look, go. You need stop signs in your life." 

"A grateful world is a happy world." 

Suggested Book: 

Available at amazon

More Quotes: 

“Everything is a gift. The degree to which we are awake to this truth is a measure of our gratefulness, and gratefulness is a measure of our aliveness.”

― David Steindl-Rast, Jesus and Lao Tzu: The Parallel Sayings

"Look closely and you will find that people are happy because they are grateful. The opposite of gratefulness is just taking everything for granted."
— David Steindl-Rast in The Music of Silence

“We are never more than one grateful thought away from peace of heart.”
― David Steindl-Rast

 

Vision Is Tonic

Originally posted in 2016

Barn in Utah

Consistency is not my middle name. I’m really good at starting new projects and new habits. Maintaining them over time … not so much.

So, it was something of a surprise to me this morning to realize that I’ve just finished 5 weeks of keeping the Gratitude Miracles journal. 35 days. Without a miss.

It made me wonder why I’ve been able to maintain this new behavior of keeping the gratitude journal when most of my new leaves have turned brown shortly after turning them over.

A couple of things come to mind … the system I designed for myself is easy and quick (5 minutes), and I completely believe that gratitude is powerful (the fact that there are scientific experiments confirming that helps).

However, last week reminded me of the interplay of vision and discomfort.

Leo Babauta talks a lot about discomfort and new habits in zenhabits.net and says that the one skill that changed his life was learning to be comfortable with discomfort. But, no one really wants to be discomforted, so that thought never got me far.

Last week, however, I did a 5-year visioning/planning workshop for a small company I’ve been involved with for the past ten years. It’s a successful, small niche company and the people are warm, generous and dedicated to quality for the clients as well as healthy, balanced lives for themselves.

One of employees shared an article focused on vision and discomfort (included below) with the main two-part take-away being:

1. Execution invariably requires taking new actions, and new actions are often uncomfortable.
2. Creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort is the key to success.

I have some new habits I would like to start … and, this time, I’m determined to maintain them over time. The Gratitude Miracles journal has given me the confidence to think I can design a system that will work for me and the article below makes me think I can withstand the discomfort involved … if I can create a vision that’s bigger than the effort and discomfort required. 

It seems that there are three things required for “success” in any new endeavor:

• Vision: a possibility or end result that’s bigger, more appealing, more delicious than the reality of today. Vision is the tonic that makes all things possible.
• Action: doing new or different things … moving out of our zone of comfort, i.e. into discomfort and tolerating the discomfort long enough to achieve the vision.
• Confidence: in the vision as a possible reality and in our own ability to tolerate the zone of discomfort to get there.

So, on this lovely Sunday afternoon, I am off to create a vision for a new possibility.

 

How about you?

More Information:

From:  The 12 Week Year by Brian Moran and Michael Lennington.

"Behind every impossible achievement is a dreamer of impossible dreams." - Robert K. Greenleaf

"All my life I wanted to be somebody. Now I see I should have been more specific." - Lily Tomlin

Effective execution isn't complicated, but it's not necessarily easy, either. In fact, most people and companies struggle to execute well. Execution invariably requires taking new actions, and new actions are often uncomfortable.

When faced with a course of action that includes difficult or uncomfortable tasks, the short-term costs of taking action can seem so much greater than the long-term benefits of reaching the goal. Because of this, individuals and entire organizations often abandon both the tasks, and ultimately, the entire strategy. We have found from experience that to execute successfully it is essential to have a strong emotional stake in the outcome.

Without a compelling reason to choose otherwise, most people will take comfortable actions over uncomfortable ones. The issue is that the important actions are often the uncomfortable ones. In our experience, the number-one thing that you will have to sacrifice to be great, to achieve what you are capable of, and to execute your plans, is your comfort. Therefore, the critical first step to executing well is creating and maintaining a compelling vision of the the future that you want even more than you desire your own short-term comfort, and then aligning your shorter term goals and plans, with that long-term vision.

Think about what you truly want to achieve.

• What legacy do you want to create?
• What do you want for yourself and for your family?
• What do you want spiritually?
• What level of security do you seek?
• What level of income and fulfillment do you want from your career?
• What interests do you wish you could pursue?
• What do you really want to do with the time you have been allotted?

If you are going to perform at a high level, take new ground, and be great, then you better have a vision that is compelling. In order to achieve a level of performance that is greater than your current performance, you will need a vision of the future that is bigger than the present. You must find a vision with which you are emotionally connected. Without a compelling vision, you will discover there is no reason to go through the pain of change.

Vision is the starting point of all high performance. You create things twice; first mentally, then physically. The biggest barrier to high performance is not the physical manifestation but the mental creation. You will never outpace your mental models. Vision is the first place where you engage your thinking about what is possible for you. 

You must be clear on what it is you want to create. Most people focus primarily on their business or career, but business is just part of life, and it is actually your life vision that gives traction and relevance to your business. That is why we begin with your personal vision, what you want your life to look like in the future. After that is established, we move on to what your business needs to look like in order to align with and enable your personal vision. The more personally compelling your vision is, the more likely it is that you will act upon it. It is your personal vision that creates an emotional connection to the daily actions that need to take place in your business.
In order to tap the incredible power of your vision you need a future that is bigger than the present. If you're going to create a breakthrough-if you're going to reach the next level-you will need to move through fear, uncertainty, and discomfort. It is your personal vision that keeps you in the game when things become difficult.

A compelling personal vision creates passion. Think about something that you are passionate about, and you will always find a clear vision behind it. If you find you're lacking passion in either your business or in a relationship, it's not a crisis of passion; it's a crisis of vision. We will show you how to craft a compelling personal vision and a business vision that aligns with and supports your life goals.

The first step is to create a personal vision, a vision that clearly captures and articulates what you want in life. The personal vision should define the life you want to live in all areas, including spiritual, relationships, family, income, lifestyle, health, and community. The personal vision creates the foundation for an emotional link to your business and career objectives so that there is a strong alignment between what you pursue in your business and the life you desire to live.

Your business vision is most powerful when it is developed in light of your personal vision. The reason so many people fail to follow through when things become difficult is due to this lack of connection with their personal lives.

Your business objectives are not the end in themselves, but the means to an end. Too often, managers and associates plan for business success but fail to connect with the real power source that will enable them to achieve that success. In essence, the personal vision is the reason why we work in the first place.

Once you understand the linkage between your life vision and your business success, you can define exactly what level of income or production your business must deliver in order to support your complete vision.

Vision provides you with that line of sight, that emotional link, to help you overcome the challenges and execute. When the task seems too difficult or unpleasant, you can reconnect with your personal objections (I think they meant objectives!) and vision. It is this emotional connection that will provide you with the inner strength to forge ahead in spite of any difficulties, thus enabling you to achieve your dreams and desires.