How to carve out your path and never lack clarity again

by

Ascend 101

Lessons about building a one-person business, writing, and self-improvement

Last week we talked about creating your hero’s journey. (You can read it here in case you missed it.)

Today we’ll define your vision, mission, and values. The combination of these empowers you to carve out your path to success.

This is a 4-minute read.

Let’s go!

Vision

Your vision is what guides you. It’s what allows you to align your daily actions and choices with your overarching goal.

You’ll lack clarity without it.

How else are you going to reflect if your daily actions are getting you closer to your goal?

Ask yourself the following questions:

  • If you had all the money in the world, what would your average day look like?

  • Where do you want to live? In what kind of environment? Do you want to travel often?

  • Do you want a family? When? How big of a family? What would an average family day be like?

  • How much do you want to work? What should your workday look like? What would you want to do?

  • How do you want to look and feel?

You can also establish your anti-vision.

This determines how you don’t want your life to look.

Define both visions and think about how you can best reflect that in your brand.

What colors should your brand be? What fonts? Think about all the design choices and the feeling they give off.

Color & font psychology shouldn’t be underestimated.

But that’s a topic we won’t be covering today. (Let me know if that’s something you’d be interested in!)

Mission

Think of your mission as the one BIG problem you’d like to solve in your life.

And when I say big, I mean it. Feeding your family isn’t big. Feeding all of Europe, now that’s a big goal.

I never said it should be realistic. You might never solve it, but that’s the point.

You need to think big if you want to solve something incredible.

Aim for the stars and land on the moon.

Long-time readers (read: 2 weeks) remember this issue where I shared my goal of wanting to free all mankind. To allow anyone and everyone to achieve true financial freedom, both time and location freedom.

Everyone should be able to experience and appreciate everything the world has to offer.

It’s an absurd goal if you think about it.

So don’t hold back.

Think about problems you’ve solved for yourself. Big or small.

Think about what interests, skills, or areas of study you know or are willing to spend countless hours learning.

Then decide on what ultimate goal you can and want to solve in the world.

Values

Your values are a baseline of topics you care about.

Life will get tough. You will make sacrifices. The road to success isn’t a straight line.

Knowing this, it’s better to decide your values upfront. To decide on a few things that you’ll never sacrifice — no matter what.

Think about the eternal markets: health, wealth, and relationships as a starting point.

What matters most to you in each domain?

Health:

  • How balanced should your diet be?

  • How much exercise should you do every week?

  • How often should you meditate/journal/relax to keep your mental health in check?

Wealth:

  • How many hours a week should you spend on work?

  • How much financial risk are you willing to take on?

  • How should(n’t) you make your money?

Relationships:

  • How much time should you spend with your family?

  • How often should you hang out with friends?

  • How many dates should you go on every month?

Some things are never worth sacrificing.

Define them upfront.

Wrap-up

Your hero’s journey describes where you came from.

Your vision, mission, and values describe where you’re headed.

Your brand is the vehicle that’s going to get you from where you are to where you want to go.

Exactly how to make your brand the perfect vehicle will be explored in the upcoming emails. So keep an eye out for those!

For now make sure to take your time to clearly define your vision, mission, and goals.

Until next week!

Cheers,
Alex.

P.S.

If you’d like more help, I’ve got your back:

  1. Schedule 1:1 coaching with me: We'll talk about how you can start building your one-person business and set you up for success in the long run.

  2. Get yourself The Ultimate Content Creator’s Toolkit: You’ll find over 100 courses, books, threads, and tools. Everything I used to educate myself on all the important topics for building your one-person business.

P.P.S.

For those interested, this is the software stack I use:
(Yes these are affiliate links)

  1. Beehiiv for my newsletter: One of the biggest, easiest, and best providers for people wanting to build their newsletter. A logical choice to make with its abundance of integrated solutions for easy growth. (e.g., an integrated referral program)

  2. Tweethunter for everything Twitter: From scheduling tweets to gathering inspiration and engaging with others. TweetHunter has everything you need if you’re serious about building your business on Twitter.

  3. Carrd to build my landing pages: We’re building a business, not a blog. Hence we have a need for simple and effective landing pages for our funnels. Carrd is an easy-to-use website builder that does exactly what it needs to.

  4. Testimonial to gather testimonials: Simply drop your clients a link where they can leave a testimonial. Gather everything in one place. And embed it on your landing pages as you wish.

  5. Ilo for my Twitter analytics (+10% discount!): Easily the most advanced and useful Twitter analytics tool. get in-depth knowledge about your audience, what they like, and who they are. As well as gaining a clear view of your best-performing content to spot trends and improve your results.

And if you've got a moment, I'd love to hear what you thought of this edition of Ascend 101.

Send me a quick message – I reply to every email!