Please welcome to the Floricane blog: Ross Catrow, founder and publisher of RVANews, and Rick Jarvis, co-founder of One South Realty! Check out where Ross writes for RVANews, here; where he tweets, here; and what things he likes, here. Rick blogs constantly about Richmond here, here, and here. Rick and Ross have been big Insights® fans from the beginning (they have preferences for opposite Insights color energies), so we thought we'd ask them what they learned at our second Insights® Explorations workshop.
Ross
I love Insights®. Like, a lot. It's helped me better understand the people around me and given me an excellent vocabulary for discussing how those people behave and move through life. While I've spent a bunch of time (too much, maybe?) thinking about how my friends, family, and coworkers process information and make decisions, I haven't really put that kind of thought into what's going on with myself. How am I moving through life? Where am I going? I...don't know, but it certainly sounds like something I should figure out!
And this was just the point of the most recent Insights® Explorations session: creating a personal vision.
I've never had a written, specific personal vision, but the idea is really appealing to me. How useful would it be to have something you can use as a measuring stick when encountering new life situations or reevaluating existing ones? Something on hand to help you decide: "Hey, is this the right thing to spend my time on? Am I handling this situation the way I should be? Am I walking the right direction down the right path?"
Luckily, the folks in the room had spent a lot of time thinking about their personal visions and when asked about what words describe their own, a thousand Post-Its issued forth covered with words like "path," "dreams," and "self awareness." Piled together in thematic groups, it gave a good visual framework for what a vision should entail.
So at the end of the session, after consulting with the brilliant people at my table, here's what I ended up with:
I want to help folks do cool things that make Richmond a better place.
This is a start! But it's also pretty lacking in a bunch of important areas: family, health, spirituality.
So now that I've got a start, I need to put some serious time into thinking about those lacking areas and how to build them up and include them in my personal vision. I'll also be thinking about how my strengths and weaknesses (as defined by Insights®) play into this vision. How can I create a vision that encourages me to use my strengths (hanging out with people and listening to them talk about their super cool projects) and challenges my weaknesses (focusing on helping other people start new things, not starting all the new things myself)?
The next Insights® Exploration takes place on June 21st (come hang out!) and focuses on goals. Which is great, because by then I'll have my vision statement trimmed and tweaked. I'll know which direction I need to be pointed in, where I'm going, and what goals I need to make to get there.
I have a lot of work in front of me, which—as Floricane is known to do—has been assigned to me as homework to complete before the next session. Now it's time to figure this thing out!
Rick
Damn you, Floricane, you did it again.
Red, green, yellow and blue — the colors we all know so well — last month were turned upside down and scrambled by the introduction of the concepts of intuitive and sensory thinking to the Insights® wheel. So, I wondered where my surprise would lie when I walked into the colorful space that Floricane calls home for session 2 of 8 in the latest from Insights® Explorations.
The focus of the most recent workshop was that of ‘creating a Personal Vision.’ Sounds easy, right? Companies have them (masquerading as the Mission Statement) and all of the professional coaches seem to have them, too (think Bill Bellicheck’s ‘Do Your Job’ or John Wooden’s ‘Success Pyramid’). Having a framework seems to be prerequisite for success and since all of the groovy business gurus seem to have one, creating my own Personal Vision seemed like a great idea — I’m in.
So what would mine look like? Should it be measurable? Should it be in multiple parts or stated as one vision? Does it require a spreadsheet? Or Powerpoint? Creation of some type of overarching personal mission statement shouldn’t be hard for me — I am pretty red — and things like mission statements and company direction all seem to come pretty easily.
Or so I thought.
The session began simply enough — Kathy probing the group and asking us to come up with words that we thought might fit into our own version of ‘personal vision.’ The 20 or so of us started spewing words that you would expect — direction, guide, help, connect, learn, teach, provide, create, family — all pretty big picture words.
And guess what, Mr. Red here caught myself using words like ‘altruism, peace and why’ and not action words like ‘execute, measure, go, do and complete.’ They just came rushing out before I could stop them. Wait, what? What are these words I am using?!? WHAT IS HAPPENING TO ME?!? WHAT HAVE I DONE WITH RICK?!?!?
Oh, no. I’ve turned green. It's not easy being green!
By the time we were done discussing the basics of a Personal Vision, I realized that what I would have thought I wanted when I walked in was really not what what I wanted at all. And all of the things that I thought would have been important in Rick’s Personal Vision are really not what gets me out of bed each day.
As I now have to sift through my now perplexed mind and wonder how I can go from the preverbal ‘bull in a china shop’ to a future yoga instructor in less than 10 minutes, it makes me wonder what else I am capable of. And I think when I really break it down, that is probably my favorite thing about Insights (and Floricane) — its ability to challenge me to think, evolve and grow. And the creation of a personal vision is yet another part of the process.
I can’t wait for the next session — who knows, maybe they will make me yellow.