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Having both a strong foundation and a strong vision is essential for growth—whether it’s for a team, relationship, business, or anything else.
In order to thrive, we need both of these things, but finding a balance between the two can be challenging, especially these days.
It’s so easy to get caught up in the day-to-day activities of work, parenting, and life…and in the process lose sight of why we’re doing what we’re doing and where we’re heading. And, yet, at the same time, if we put too much attention on our big vision, we can easily lose sight of the necessary actions we need to take on a regular basis to maintain stability, consistency, and success.
The Important Balance of Foundation and Vision
Taking care of the basics
To take care of ourselves, our core, and our foundation, we have to take care of the basics. If we do that, it can create the foundation that leads to something great. For example, if we’re not eating well, sleeping well, or managing ourselves physically, it’s hard to maintain a healthy mental and emotional mindset, which then makes it hard for us to succeed.
However, when we solely focus on the day-to-day foundation and maintenance of work and life, we can often feel monotonous and stagnant. Doing this often doesn’t leave us feeling inspired or excited.
When we balance these important basics with innovation, dreams, goals and creativity, that’s where the magic happens.
I’m grateful to do work that I love and am passionate about. I also feel fortunate to have a loving family, as well as so many blessings and privileges. Even with all of this, I still find myself getting stuck in the day-to-day maintenance of my life and business much more than I’d like to admit…especially during this uncertain time of the pandemic.
I see this a lot with businesses I’ve partnered with over the past two decades. If a company focuses on their core and isn’t innovating, changing, growing, and evolving, how will it learn to adapt to change and challenges so that it doesn’t fail? Innovation, change and disruption can be scary, but they are essential to embrace. This is often easier in the early stages, but when we start to have a little success, we can become even more risk-averse, having understandable fears of screwing up. What Inspires Us?
When we’re doing the necessary things to maintain our lives or business, we also have to think about what inspires us. In addition to working on the foundation, it’s important to be willing to think big enough—to have a vision and a dream about what we want to create.
What inspires you personally? What excites you and the people around you? I love doing what I’m doing, but at the same time, there are moments when I don’t want to do some things. There are parts of the job that aren’t my favorite. I also love being married and being a dad, but there are moments when I find it incredibly challenging…not sure if I’m up for the challenge.
We all have these moments, especially these days. This is why it’s so important for us to have a strong vision – a north star we can look to when things get hard, or we bump into the inevitable walls.
While it’s essential to focus on our foundation and do the necessary things to have some semblance of order integrity in our lives, that’s not what life is all about. So how do we balance our foundation and our vision? How can we ensure that we take care of ourselves and focus on the core, but at the same time not let that take over?
It’s important to carve out time for innovation, creativity, and dreaming. We have to have enough groundedness to focus on the day-to-day while at the same time being able to think big.
Having a foot in both of those worlds—in the now and the future—is essential. In business, we need people on our team who can stay grounded and remind us of the realities of business (the budget, strategy, financials, etc.). We also need people who are innovative and creative.
As Mother Teresa famously said, “Not all of us can do great things, but we can all do small things with great love.”
There are, of course, lots of paradoxes in the balance of foundation and vision. Maintaining our core while having enough space and trust to aspire is what life is all about. And, when we’re able to do this effectively, it can propel us and those around us to new levels of success and fulfillment.
I have written five books about the importance of trust, authenticity, appreciation and more. In addition, I deliver keynotes and seminars (both in-person and virtually) to empower people, leaders and teams to grow, connect and perform their best. Finally, as an expert in teamwork, leadership and emotional intelligence, I teach techniques that allow people and organizations to be more authentic and effective. Contact me to book a call or learn more about how I can help you and your team achieve your goals today. You can also listen to my podcast here.
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