Does your childhood dream matter? Does it relate to who you’ve come as an adult? Maybe not, but it’s worth making sure you’re not settling.
Do you ever take the time to consider if and how your life turned out the way you imagined when you were younger? Sure, you probably don’t want to be a ballerina or the President anymore, but there’s something to be said for checking in and making sure you’re not settling for less than what your vision once was. Here’s a quick thought exercise to reflect on that!
Podcast Recording of Your Childhood Vision Episode
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Facebook Live Recording of Your Childhood Vision Episode
Transcript of Your Childhood Vision Episode
Okay, good morning, Facebook. Hi, Instagram. Happy Monday morning. I hope that you all had a wonderful weekend. I’m pretty bitter about the Super Bowl, but we don’t have to go into that. I’m mostly very excited to be here with all of you now. So for those of you that are watching on Facebook, if someone could just let me know that you could hear me, we will dive into it. I have an exciting announcement today. I also want to talk to you about something that’s been really on my heart lately. Then I want to also leave time to do some live Q&A because I want to just be able to be here to answer questions for you. So I’m on Instagram. I’m also on Facebook. I think you guys can hear me think we’re all good.
Also bitter about that. Yeah, it was awful. Okay. Thanks so much, Kathryn. I’m so happy to see you here. You are just a shining star. I love reading everything you wrote this morning. Katherine’s in one of my groups and she’s just a rock star. So anyway.
Welcome, welcome. Welcome to the start of a new week. I love Mondays. I love the, you know, feeling that anything new is possible. That is especially applicable on the first Monday of a new month. So I am full of energy today. I literally have a coffee here as well as green juice. I’m like a little bar here by myself at my desk, but it’s just such an exciting day. So I’m on Instagram. I’m also on Facebook. And, excitingly This is going to be turned into a podcast that is my exciting news for you all. I’m launching something called the “Your Biggest Vision Show” and I couldn’t be more thrilled to bring this to you all and to connect with you guys in a new way. So what this will be is two episodes every week, one is going to be live every week. So, every Friday every or I’m sorry every Monday morning.
You can expect to see me here and the reason it was really important to me to do a live episode every week is because I want you all to have time, I want you all to know that you can ask me questions throughout the week at least once a week. That there’s a place where you can come together and you know bring me whatever you got going and if you come every week the more I’ll know about you and the more I’ll know about whatever you’re you’re doing and whatever you’re up to and the more I’ll be able to help you so I’m very excited about the live recording once a week so that’ll be on Mondays and then that will be turned into this podcast episode. Then on Wednesdays, you will also get a new podcast episode. So two episodes a week. Look out for more announcements about what it really is this weekend. I know, it’s kind of weird that it originates on two different platforms but I love that it’s going to have both a live component as well as an actual recorded component, so that is my exciting news and I have a whole podcast episode actually already recorded that you will get to hear about, kind of why I started this and the background behind it and I definitely encourage you to go listen to it once it’s live, because I really wanted to share the sort of development of how I thought of this. I wanted to share it because I get questions from my clients and just people emailing me all the time about what they want to focus on next, should they be doing certain types of social media? Should they be doing a certain type of communications marketing? It’s so easy to have this, you know, shiny object syndrome, for lack of a better word. I think a lot of times people just do want to be creative and they want to connect and it’s hard to know exactly which way to do that. I completely understand that I completely understand how that goes. So I shared kind of my whole thought process how this led up to me doing this from last year and the way my business looked last year and how it’s different now.
For those of you that might know, you know, last year for over half of the year I was still at a nine to five job and so things moved very quickly last year, things were very intense and now things are changing and different and so you’re going to hear all of that and I encourage you to go watch that but this is the first live recording of it so once this podcast, once you get the release of it, this will actually be episode four. So I’m going to have three episodes already made for you to go kind of go back and binge watch and it’s going to be a really incredible show. There are lots of great interviews lined up from big visionaries and that brings me to the topic I want to bring to you today. I hope that you all have some comments and questions about yourselves which is about your childhood vision.
I just want you to bear with me here while I dive into this. So, my podcast is called your biggest vision and I don’t even think I should call it a podcast, actually, it’s more just a show because it’s going to be here on Facebook Live. As you can see, I think, there’s a logo here somewhere maybe, maybe it hasn’t worked yet but, I will make sure that it is there but it’s on Facebook as well as on the on the public platform as well as on YouTube. So all of this will also be put on YouTube because I want you guys to be able to digest this however you want. It wasn’t so important to me what platform or medium I pursued, it was more important to me what message I really wanted to focus on and bring next.
So that’s where this vision piece came in. I know that it might sound a bit abstract at first, but what I really care about at the core of my business, and at the core of when I design on my programs, and when I work with people one on one or whatever writing the email is tech support people in standing up for their vision, even when things might be feeling like they are tearing it down. So if you have a vision for yourself, whatever it is, but you have obstacles in the way things like your society, the society, maybe your friends and family, maybe your own ego, not knowing how you’re going to get there, maybe fear of what’s in front of you in order to reach that vision. All the sort of muddy things along the way, I want to always be the voice that is helping you stand up for the vision side of this.
It’s not always easy to stand up for it. I know I’ve been through a lot of this myself. And I work with people every single day to continue fighting for the vision that they have for themselves. Even when it’s not clear, even when it’s scary, even when it seems far away, even when it feels like there are a million reasons not to move forward. How do you keep standing up for that vision? Those are the kinds of resources and topics that I’m going to bring to you two times a week is different ways, methods, stories, inspirations, community to continue holding on to that vision with all your might, because if we don’t hold on to it, if we don’t fight for it, no one else is going to, it’s just the truth. It doesn’t mean people don’t care about you. It doesn’t mean that you know, it’s a dark world, but people are concerned about their own thing. So you have to be concerned about your own thing. You have to be the one that is always standing up and fighting for the bigger vision you have for yourself.
This vision will change. This vision will mean different things at different times. And that’s all okay, this is not about figuring everything out. This is about staying strong in your power and in your voice about whatever that vision is for you at the time. Now, importantly, as you all know, I do a lot of work with side hustling and side hustlers. Not everyone’s vision is to have a side hustle or to have a vision and that’s okay. I really want to be clear that this is just about visionary people who are visionaries and whatever sort of, you know, lane they’re choosing or lane they’re currently in. You can have visions for how you want next week to go or visions for how you want your whole life to go. But the idea is to stay in the zone of believing and knowing that whatever the vision is, it’s there you can have it, what do you need to do to hold on to it and to make it happen and not dismiss it? That’s what I really want to talk to you about. So, today, I thought there would be no better or fitting way to start out this theme and this topic and share this news with you all then to talk about your childhood vision.
The reason this is so perfect is because it really is a full circle type thing. It’s really what Urban 20 something is all about. So a lot of times people ask me your brain is called Urban 20 something, do only work with people that are in their 20’s and live in cities? And of course, you know, that couldn’t be further from the truth. In fact, I work with people from all around the world. I work with men and women. I work with people of all different ages. Some of my most favorite clients and best-performing clients are actually people that are in their 40s and 50s looking for sort of a new second chapter in business. So my brand name has nothing to do with my clients, when maybe it should, maybe that’s something I should have thought about a little more. But when I’m starting out, I didn’t know things were going to turn into what they are. But Urban 20 something is about me, I’m the Urban 20 something and I’m not going to be 20 something forever. But I started this website and I wanted to start sharing my life in New York and I wanted to start documenting my pursuit to my, you know, vision that I have when I was a child. And what that was. What that has always been is to live in New York to have a fulfilling job, to live comfortably here. I’ve never beat around the bush with wanting to make money and I don’t encourage you to either, and to really experience the whole package that I thought the city had to offer.
New York was the childhood dream I had since I was six, seven that every little girl has when they’re six or seven, but I never grew out of it. I never stopped wanting it. You know, when everyone else got to high school, they were sort of like yeah, I kinda want to say in Colorado where I’m from, I don’t really feel the need to move across the country or to a huge city are really far away. I never lost it. I always knew that this was where I wanted to be. So Urban 20 something is the sort of short version of what my childhood vision is. This does not mean that things have gone perfectly. This does not mean my life has turned out perfect. This does not mean that things have not turned out differently than I thought they would as a child. This actually has nothing to do about whether or not things have worked out the way I thought they were as a kid.
But I wanted to share with you what Urban 20 something really was about, and why I am choosing this theme of vision to really focus on and that’s because it really just comes back full circle to the beginning of why I started this, why I named it what I have, and what still continues to drive me today. I have to say, through all my different career options, travels even different things I’ve done within my website itself. I have never ever really faltered on what my biggest vision is, which has always been to live life comfortably, to live life in New York and getting married here that worked out nicely and I really stuck to it and it served me well. So I wanted to talk just about what it means to come back to, you know what you thought your life would be like as a kid. When I was doing some research for this, I was googling and trying to do some reading and even listen to some other podcasts about this concept of how life might turn out differently then, aw thanks Adam. He’s the guy I’m marrying so he’s a big part of my vision come true. I love you.
I was doing some reading on this, I was reading some blogs and I was pretty disappointed in the things I found out about and the things I read about this concept of your childhood vision. I’ll tell you why, I saw a lot of articles about basically life not turning out the way you thought it would be and how that’s okay. I don’t disagree with those things. Like I said, My life has changed in a lot more ways than I than I thought it would. You know, I’ve experienced a lot of things I never would have anticipated and that’s fine. It’s not about having like, perfectly planned out for you and having nothing chang or anything like that. But, the the sense I got from a lot of what I was reading was a sense of surrender, and was a sense of dismissiveness. That’s what makes me sad, is basically settling for things that you might not have wanted, or a life that might not really make you happy. So, what I encourage you to ask yourself today on this Monday, on this first Monday of February, with the whole week, the whole month, the whole year, still at your fingertips is to really just take a minute and connect back to the dreams you have for yourself when you were younger and think what about them is different than the way things have turned out for me now and why.
So this is what’s important. It doesn’t matter if your life turned out differently than you thought it would when you were younger. If no longer want to want those things that you might have wanted once upon a time. For example, I first fell in love with New York because I wanted to be a dancer I wanted to be a ballerina I wanted to you know be on Broadway be in ABT, like that was my thing. I loved to dance very much and I wanted to go to NYU for their dance program and then when I was about 16, for a couple different reasons dismissed dance from my future as a career I have a very bad back and my doctor was pretty explicit about why, you know, that would be painful for me, I’m also very short dancers are quite tall. I also realized that it would just, it would just be a difficult for a lot of different reasons and I didn’t know if I was good enough.
So, you know, I stopped wanting to do that with my career. That’s how that went. I no longer had the desire to be a ballerina but my desire to live in New York, my desire to go to NYU, my desire to then pursue what other sort of career would really excited me and be creative which wasn’t law school but that’s a whole nother story. That’s what still stuck with me and still sprouted, so I would encourage you to just journal or you know, even now, if you want to share within the comments on Facebook or any sort of way that you like to be reflective and just think about what is different about the way my life has turned out then the way I envisioned it when I was younger, and why? Is it because I don’t want those things anymore? If so, that’s fine. You should go do something nice for yourself, because that means it continued to stick with what you want. But, if it’s because you might have heard or been taught or thought along the way that something about it is impossible, isn’t worth pursuing. Isn’t right for you, isn’t going to happen. Maybe society helped you believe these things, maybe family members, maybe even friends, sometimes people you look up to.
You don’t have to know all the answers, but if you can identify in your heart if there’s something that you wanted that you have let go of because you may have been convinced that it wasn’t right for you along the way, then that’s where I encourage you to dig that deep out and see if you can bring that vision back to life and see how you can have it be part of your reality and how you can chase it. How you can stand up for it, and how you can hold on to it. One of the things that I really I had dismissed for a long time when I was in my early 20s was basically the idea of having financial success in my 20s, which of course, when I was younger, I thought I was like me living their dream in my 20s who didn’t, you know, I thought I was going to be traveling all the time, and like saving a ton of money and life is going to be super cheesy. Then I got to my early 20s, and because of where I first worked, which was a law firm in New York. It was great law firm, but because it was with a ton of lawyers, I started believing this story.
That financial freedom and financial success and making six figures was not possible until you had gone through an additional three years of law school or graduate school, had taken out tons and tons of debt to go to these schools, had to slave at you know you’re professional job for 20 hours a day or whatever it was,pay back those loans you know really worked your way up day and night, and then eventually got to a place where you were making whatever income you wanted in your loans were paid off. And you were a partner, some sort of higher up efficient like lawyer in the firm so that you no longer had to be working so much, and that is what I believed I had to do to get financially successful. Specifically, what I had my own six figures. I wanted to be making six figures and you know, for years then I had just decided that this dream I had when I was younger, to be making six figures in my 20s was just not going to happen for me. I thought that I needed to go to graduate school or law school and work a lot and take out debt and do all those things. Because that was the way success was being modeled to me at the time.
It really took me I guess, seeing other people prove me wrong and me finally questioning what I was being told and what people were displaying to me to really shake it out of me and realize that I could come up with a different definition of success. I could come up with a different way to make six figures, if I wanted, if I wanted and that’s not to say that, you know, that’s the only reason I didn’t want to go be a lawyer or anything like that. But really coming to a place of empowerment and realizing that something I was believing was just a story. It was just something someone else had believed and it was just something someone else had told me, it did not have to be my reality. So maybe watching this you can think of something like that you can think of something that you’ve either been told or believed and maybe you’ve already stepped out of it by now, but really just starting to get cautious and aggressive with what you’re believing, what you’re allowing other people to tell you.
Hey, Rachel.
What you are letting other people influence you to believe and really start to, you know, be on guard for what things are being told, things are being shown things, you’re allowing yourself to believe that might be hurting that vision that you have for yourself. So, this is where standing up for your vision becomes a responsibility of yours. I think that’s a really empowering way to look at it, because if you think that, you know, not believing others or sort of ignoring others to some extent, might have a chance to it or selfishness to it, because we are, you know, just doing things our way. Basically, I want you to really realize that it’s actually very noble of you, and in fact, your duty to do whatever it takes to stand up for the vision that you have.
Again, this doesn’t mean you’ll have everything figured out. It also doesn’t mean that it’s easy all of the time. But it is your vision. And you get to decide what it is that you’re going to believe. And if something you’re going to tell yourself is going to hurt that vision, it is your job to recognize that and think about it differently. So I hope that makes sense. That’s why I wanted to come at this childhood vision thing first, because I know a lot of us did have a way that we wanted things to look or way we wanted our lives to feel, or a way that we wanted things to turn out when we were younger.
It’s worth taking a step back and thinking about why things might look differently. Sometimes things just don’t work out. Sometimes your desires change and that can be a very good thing. But sometimes it’s because we have allowed ourselves to believe something that has damaged that vision. And it’s actually really exciting and an empowering thing to realize that if we have learned to believe something we can unlearn to believe it as well. We can choose to believe something that will foster that vision once again and bring it to life. So that’s what we’re all about here. Now, I want to go ahead and see if you guys have any questions on this announcement, this podcast in general. If you have any recommendations for me? Do you have any questions on what it means to hold on to your vision? Do you want to share your vision? Or if you have any questions about side hustling business or anything else like that, that I’m here for you too. While I wait for you guys to take them, I just also do want to let you know that I will definitely be talking about business stuff here. So though I want this podcast be very focused on that bigger vision that definitely needs your business vision too. So still stick around for things like you know, getting your word out there, building your email list, raising your prices, and making bigger mone. All of that is so in service to the vision of me and you and you know, so many, so that will definitely be here as well. Like I said, I’m going to send an email out you’ll get an email out early this week with four of the podcast episodes already recorded and so keep an eye out for all this, but I just wanted you guys to be the very first to know here, live. For those of you that feel so inclined, the more you share this, tag this, throughout the week especially as you listen to the episodes I would be so, so grateful and really appreciate your support. Alright let’s see what we’ve got going on on Facebook.
Okay well, thank you guys so much for your sweet comments. Yeah, that’s super bowl was brutal, okay, awesome.
Catherine: I wanted to have a career in college sports PR but when the industry changed I decided it wasn’t for me and now I figured out that being an entrepreneur is right for me. And it really allows me to have a clear vision for what I want in my life and in my future.
Yeah, Catherine, if I may just point out the incredible things you’ve done. So those of you watching may not know Kathryn, but you will soon and I just want to point out her story here quickly because it is such an inspiration for all of us on this Monday. She recently left a job that was very disempowering for her not necessarily having it all ready or planned and she has done more in the last month then I see most people do all year and it really shows. You know, I understand that starting a side hustle in a business can have fear that comes up with it. But there are some people that will email me month after month after month after year with questions about starting wondering when they should start if this is a good idea, and Catherine is just a true testament to what it means to put pen to paper and stop questioning yourself and make things happen. What she’s done in a month is comparable to what I see most people do in several months. You have everything to be proud of Catherine’s so thank you for sharing how you have stayed true to your vision, even when you haven’t always seen the bigger picture or the how or anything like that.
Okay, Georgina: I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do. But I did know I didn’t want to stick with the status quo. And I didn’t want to do the same thing day after day for years calling it a life I didn’t know how to do it until about six months ago, and Leah has been a great source of inspiration for that. Thanks so much for sharing Georgina.
So, this is what I’m talking about here. Thank you for sharing this, this is you telling me that you, you do have a vision, you don’t have to see it all clearly. But you having the vision of not living a life within the status quo, not doing the same thing day after day for years. That to me is a vision worth chasing after. That is something worth holding on to, even if you don’t exactly know what it’s going to look like or even if you don’t exactly know how you’re going to get there. Just having that bigger picture for yourself and the bigger assurance that you don’t want to do. A vision can often be informed by what you don’t want, sometimes more than what you actually do want. So thank you for sharing that, Georgina. You also have done incredibly well starting your side hustle and I’m very proud of you.
Okay, Drew: What’s the difference between your vision and your goals?
Great question. So I think that there is, of course, going to be overlap between the two of them. But I’ve always thought of goals as a lot more concrete in terms of steps that you’re taking in order to bring your vision to life. When I thought of this and really thought of what it means to be a visionary, there was sort of three pillars that really clearly were presented to me. I’m looking forward to sharing with you guys, the episode of how I thought of this podcast in the show, because it was, it was just so clear, you know how sometimes you’re, you’re wanting to do something, and you’re kind of thinking of something, and none of it really makes sense, and you’re trying to piece it all together; and then sometimes things just snap and everything falls into place. That’s how this was.
So the vision parts that I thought of really combined what I think of as the three most important parts of my business and what I do with my clients every day, but in a really cohesive way. So, you have the vision for your business, right? So always pushing yourself further and this is so important to me working with side hustlers because a lot of times people get into side hustling because they want to get back their student loans sooner, or they you know, just want a little bit less stress with the monthly bills and that’s why I started too, so I get that but really thinking okay, what more could this be? What about my vision for what’s possible with something I’m creating? What about the extra hours I have around my nine to five? What can I do with that? Who can I be with that? You know, really questioning and pushing yourself to envision something bigger for yourself. That is what was important to me about the part of pushing your business vision. So, I think that that can be a bit not necessarily different, but not exactly the same as your business goals. I often see business goals as a lot more concrete and they’re sort of the stepping stones it takes to get toward that bigger vision. But, I feel like a vision is such a big grand thing, and with your with your goals, they’re kind of the concrete steps that will get you there. I hope that makes sense.
So business was one the other was just sort of, you know, your mindset and the questioning of what’s possible for you in general and re-envisioning your life to push to your highest potential and your highest possibility, and the highest version of what you can be. Then the other was just pushing the, the vision of, well, so to clarify these two, one is just the vision of what’s possible for you and who you want to be and what you envision your life to be, very much lifestyle related. Then, the third is just sort of the vision of what’s possible in general. How big of an impact can you make? How much money can you make? What can you do? How much grander can you live? How much bigger can you be? And so, it kind of like one, starts a bit more concrete with business. The others more like about your lifestyle, and the way you want to live and how you’re questioning that. And then the biggest is just, you know, who you are in the world and the way you want to talk to people in the world and really present yourself as someone that knows that there are no limits to what’s possible and to really show up as someone like that because we all know that there’s something infectious about being around people that just are excited and buzzing with energy and looking forward to what’s next and what’s new. To me, you can be one of those people. The easiest way to be one of those people is by not putting a limit on your vision for what’s possible and for continuing to question the norm and continuing questioning what you think is right, for you or right for others. So, you know, that is the kind of environment I love to be in. It’s the kind of environment I want to create. I hope that that helps through that.
Thank you for that question, though. That’s a great question.
Alright, Catherine, thank you so much. You’re so welcome. Yeah, you and Georgina both have made amazing moves, very soon. So anyway, looks like those are the only questions but thank you guys so much for tuning in. I hope you’re as excited as I am. I’d love any feedback or if you have any requests. And, like I mentioned, if you feel so inclined to share, I would be very grateful for that too. We’re going to be sending around more information on the podcast, how you continue and how you can request things and how you can share it a bit easier. So stay tuned for all about that, but no matter what, I hope you have an amazing week, an amazing month and thank you all so much for being here. From the bottom of my heart and here is to your greatest vision.
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