[00:01] Katie: Welcome to The Focus B Show, where Katie Stoddart, high performance coach, interviews experts around the world in performance and mindfulness. Now here's your host. Katie.

[00:32] Katie: Welcome to another episode of the Focus B. Show. Today I'm here with Delphine Fleuri. Delphine is a life vision coach and a teta healing practitioner. She's also a speaker and the host of two podcasts. Thank you so much for being with me today, delphine, thank you so much.

[00:49] Delphine: For having me on your kelly real, real pleasure.

[00:54] Katie: As your life vision coach, tell me, why do you think it's important to have a vision for our future?

[01:03] Delphine: Yes, this is a topic very dear and very dear to my heart. I'm really happy today to speak about it. What is a vision? I think it's also nice to go back to what is a vision? And a vision is really two things. It's clarity on your mission, or you could call it a purpose or a project very dear to your heart or whatever. But I called it mission because sometimes it can be the mission you have for yourself or for your company, for your business. So it's clarity, crystal clarity, if I can say, on your vision, on your mission. That is, what is the vision? Yes, sometimes it's a bit tricky with vision and mission, but I think you got it. And this vision is very important because it gives you three things that really gives you power in your life in general, but most specifically in a career or business. The first thing is that it gives you focus. I could also have said strategy, but it's really like when you have a clear vision where you're going to, you don't spend time or less time in things that are not worth it or that are not serving your mission because you have the clarity on the final destination, the end destination. So focus is the first thing, and I think this is something you're very attached to. The second thing is that it gives you alignment. You have the feeling you are home. And this feeling of being home, being aligned. For some people it can be very spiritual. For some, it's just this feeling you are in the right place. It means you are in your flow state when you are working or going on in your journey and in your day. And that's very important because it's so much lighter, so much easier to it doesn't mean you don't have obstacles, but it's getting easier. And the third thing, it gives you the motivation, the drive, the inner drive to go on when you have hardships in life or where the environment is not always serving you, or you think, wow, it doesn't go my way, but it gives you this gut feeling, this inner drive. I don't have any other word or motivation to always go further. So I think this three scene combined really gives you the inner power and the inner compass to go on and you feel just more happy and more joyful when you wake up in the morning. Well, it's very short said and it can look easy when I say it, but it can take some time to go there. But I think this is really the main benefit to have this vision is to be focus, aligned and feel driven and I think the result is you are really empowered, but by yourself, not by the outer world or something. It goes beyond family or society requirements, conventions, boundaries, all those kind of things. This is something that come from inside and I think that's a really important point.

[04:29] Katie: I love these three aspects focus, alignment and motivation. And you can sort of imagine how they're all correlated because if you're very clear on your focus, then you're necessarily aligned because everything sort of fits inside you. It's part of integrity and partly combining with your values. And then the motivation comes from the fact that, first of all, like you said, you have crystal clarity, so you know where you're going. So it's easier to aim for something and it's easier to be motivated when you know what you're aiming for. So I love these aspects. I'm thinking there might be people listening who have never created a vision either for their life or their business, and who might think, this sounds absolutely great, but how do I even start? They might be feeling a bit lost or confused do you have specific tools that can help people to start their first vision?

[05:19] Delphine: Yes, of course. There are a lot of tools to clarify your vision. May that be your life vision, your career vision or whatever, your family vision. There are several tools, but I think there is one big thing to understand. And then there is the first tool I used, why I came across that was not my decision. It happened like that, which was really a shifting experience. So the first thing I want to say is that having this clarity on your vision, it's a tuning in thing. So it's a listening to your I know it can sound a bit cliche, but this is really like tuning in, listening to your heart, your inner voice, whatever you call it. But it's really like a work between you and you and not the outside. Of course you can be helped, coached, whatever to do that. But it's the first thing. So that's the first thing I wanted to say. And I wanted to make the difference too, between envisioning and visualization. So vision and visualization. Visualization is a lot of people do that, which is quite nice to project themselves in situations to know how they would react or when they have goals, they are visualizing it so it became more familiar and they can attract it more when they believe in attraction law or something like that. But envisioning and light vision is really a good work. It goes deeper and deeper. And sometimes when you do this exercise you imagine or you see things you had no idea of and you don't know where it comes or whatever, but it feels so obvious or aligned with you and you are like wow. There can be kind of small revelations in the envisioning process. So this is something I wanted to say because it's not quite the same thing and I think the first tool I used and I came across was imagining what would be your ideal average day in ten years from now. Well, it's really like you can do it several ways. When I did it, I was very aware and conscious. But when I do it right now with my clients, the clients I coached, I do it like a real guided meditation where it's almost small. Hypnosis, in fact, to make them really disconnect from now and disconnect of what is possible now to project themselves and what they really want deep down inside and not what is possible. What could fit with their family or their, I don't know, circumstances. No really, like what would be their ideal average day in ten years from now? And just tell the story. It's like a small journey in the future but it's not seeing the future. Of course we are not seers or whatever, but it's a very nice exercise because a lot of things come out at that time you had not expected. So it's almost a game sometimes. So I think even if you are not into meditation or whatsoever, just take one or 2 hours of your time tuning and then just ask yourself what would be my idle average day in ten years from now? Where would I wake up and go into details? With whom would I be? How would my house or my room or even my bed look like? What am I doing in that day? Am I working? Not working? What kind of business activities do I have children? And it gives you a very global and quite comprehensive overview on your life vision in ten years from now. Of course it's ten years, it could be 911, we don't care. It's just the idea of projecting yourself far away enough for it to be different from now. So I think it's a very nice exercise. It's a first step into the vision process, then there are other things that can be done, but it's like a first nice bite of it that's really nice.

[09:54] Katie: I'd never actually heard that exercise. And I think the idea of imagining your daily life is very powerful because instead of having one very specific goal or something you just want to achieve for a split moment, you're actually looking at what would you like every day to look like. And that's really nice. I think that's very powerful.

[10:14] Delphine: And the power in it too is that you feel it. It's not only you see it, but you feel it. So you can anchor it. And after that, you have a kind of most of the time it feels wonderful because the command is to see your ideal every day, so it's idle, so it must please you. So most of the time, people, when they do that, they feel wonderful. They feel empowered, they feel aligned and everything. And if you can anchor those feelings deep down inside, well, it begins to well, the magic of the vision is beginning to work and beginning to happen, and you have it inside, and it creates a kind of a craving to know more or to begin to act upon it or those kind of things. So I think this feeling seeing not only knowing or seeing, but also feeling inside is a big shift, too. Is a big shift, too, in that small exercise, which is quite a first big step.

[11:21] Katie: Yes, I can imagine that. And I like the fact that you said it was almost a combination of hypnosis and meditation that you use, because I can see that probably on a deep level, subconsciously, people know what they want. They probably know that they don't want to be in an office anymore. Maybe they want their own business, or maybe they want to be in a different relationship or live in a different country. They probably know it deep down, but they don't accept it consciously. So it's like you're digging in the subconscious, getting it out, making it conscious, and then they can't ignore it anymore.

[11:54] Delphine: Yes, exactly. And they must be willing to do this too, which is not the case of everyone. But once you have begun to walk on that journey, on that path, it's hard to go back. You can get stuck somewhere out of fear or limiting beliefs or those kind of things, but going back no. What you do because you don't want it, it's really a digging process. You're right with that. I like that word well, I often.

[12:29] Katie: Think in general that coaching is a bit like a detective work so it can be detective and digging because you want to find all the different clues and put them together.

[12:37] Delphine: Exactly, it's an exploration, it's a digging exploration if I could say and it's also connecting the dots and the missing links thing first to dig things out. Sometimes I have people who have small part of their vision but they are like oh my God, I have this talents, this superpower. I could say I have these longings or these desires but how do I put them all together so that it matches and it becomes a real vision and not a puzzle of missing pieces everywhere? So the envisioning process for those people is really helpful to put it all together into a beautiful coherent vision that's really driving and empowering because it's consistent and coherent and aligned so it can help a lot of different people in different situations.

[13:47] Katie: How often do you think it's important for people to do this envisioning process. So let's say someone that's already happy and fulfilled in their job or their life and they don't want a radical change but they're just sort of wondering okay, what's my next sort of shift? What's my next big step? Because I also think it might be too much to do it too often. So what do you think is a good timeline to do it?

[14:12] Delphine: Yes, well, in the case you have just mentioned, people quite happy and everything, the vision I think it's good to make a check like you go to the doctor, but it's like a prevention check, I would say, and you can do it like every six months, I would say, just to be sure you are on the right track. Or the second thing you can do is if you have an important question, a choice to make, everything is fine, but you just have to choose a way. It happens sometimes in career, business or life and then you can check with your vision if the choice you are about to make is aligned or not. It's like a kind of an inner compass and I think it's a powerful tool for that too once you have really put it out there and you have it clear when you are transitioning from a life to another, all those kind of things, but after it's much more like an inner compass. You can check in when you need it or on a regular basis every I would say every six months or every three months if you need it. Well, checking with a vision can be quite reassuring in fact but maybe after a while you don't need to check as often because you have it inside you and so you don't feel that longing anymore or not so urgent, I would say. But another thing to take into consideration too is that your vision is not your vision. Adapt is adapting with your project, with your life. It's not like oh, I got the vision, it's right there, it could be like a painting. No, it's not that. It's not static, it's flexible, it's moving with you, it's your vision. So it only depends on you and you are not a human being stuck in time in one moment. No, you are evolving. So the vision is evolving too. That's why checking in with yourself and your vision is very important because sometimes you can do something and at one moment it's not aligned anymore with who you are becoming. So you need to adjust the vision or to dig deeper and see how it has evolved along with who you are now, who you want to be now. And that's okay, it's only a tool. It's not like, I don't know, prophecy or whatsoever that's important, this flexibility and evaluation thing. Yes.

[17:08] Katie: I also think that keeping in mind that it's a flexible and movable and changeable adaptable vision is important because as we change and as new people enter our lives and as we change, maybe geographical places, things change. We have different thoughts and ideas and inspiration. And I think that's a very powerful statement and thing to keep in mind. Because if we get too stuck on our previous vision, that can prevent us from moving forward. If that was a big epiphany at the time and we felt this is what I need to do forever and two years later we realized maybe not then that's important. To readapt, reconsider and therefore checking our vision every six months or so, like you said, can be very useful and powerful.

[17:55] Delphine: Yes. And not stick to your vision like it's your Bible or whatsoever is important too, because your vision, it's like an intention, a direction. But there are several ways you can go there, I think, at one moment. And I went through it too. You have to let go on the way on how to do it, because maybe some things can come into your life and you are, oh, well, that's another way to go there. I just didn't see it at first, or wow, it's much easier than I thought. Oh well, I need to learn this first to go there. So have this vision and then just take a bit of distance and say okay, I can let go. The vision is really the why and the what on the long term and you can let go on the how a bit more and be a bit more like and stay really agile, flexible on this. And I think it's a good thing to have not to stick to the vision. Like your whole life depends on it. It's relax on the way. I was not relaxed, so I know what it says.

[19:21] Katie: I love what you said about not getting too stuck in the how to get there because this true life can be full of surprises and if you're very clear on where you'd like to go, different things will happen and you can't know about it in advance. So if you're too fixed on the how, you might get stuck because you don't actually know the how but if you just keep it in mind and consistently do things in that direction, it helps. In some ways it feels to me like a vision is a combination of goals because it's a bit the same with goals. You keep them in mind, you measure the progress, you track, you see if you're still aligned and then you readjust and take steps accordingly.

[20:00] Delphine: Yes, I think goals well, I have always a bit struggle with goals, I have to confess. I like to call them priorities better than goals but I think it's a question of wordings or whatsoever, but I think that those goals are priorities are just serving your vision where you want it's just the direction where you want to go. Yes. Your vision is a kind of a mix of goals and priorities and how you want to feel. Yes, nice.

[20:39] Katie: And how do you feel that having a vision contributes to sort of having high levels of performance in your business for example?

[20:49] Delphine: Yes, that's a very good question. I think that well, as I have told before, it gives you a lot of focus and alignment so of course focus helps you make the right decision or take well, all decision is a good decision if it goes in the right direction but sometimes you can have a decision taking the short way or the longer way. So can help you just decide and I think it helps you with this focus thing because it can really spare you some energy or time loss. This is really this idea of being just really more shortcuts to the right direction. So performance is all about optimizing also your time and your energy spending on the most impactful things for you, for your career, for others. Well, this is how I understand it and I think that your vision is really like a compass. Is it aligned with it, will it serve it or not? And then let go of the things that are not worthy and really focus on the one thing that will produce the expected outcome. So I think it's the first thing and the second thing is when you have the motivation, of course you are much more performant because you are not pushing yourself. It's a vision, it's one of the best tools against procrastination because when you have this inner motivations, this inner drive, you do not procrastinate or a lot less than you used to do because you feel like doing it. You wake up in the morning sometimes it just doesn't feel like work, it's just your past, it's just what you're meant to do so it's different. So you are performant at it. I mean, if you are not too tired, of course you are not like a robot or anything but it's really like I think yes, it gives you fire, this inner fire to do things. So yes, you are much more performant if you feel like doing it, if it's not any kind of effort, if it's just natural and you feel like doing it of course you will be more focused and performant if you have the right tools to know how to work and not having too many ideas. I think that with a vision it gives you focus. It's a powerful tool for people also who are very visionaries or creative persons because our entrepreneurs, those kinds of people are very like, I have a new ID, I have another one and it's coming away and like and sometimes you decide like, what am I going to do with all that stuff? And I have to stay on my track to get things done and achieve things. Otherwise I will lock myself in thoughts and beautiful ideas. And the vision can be this compass who makes you like you go back to the right path and either you can incorporate into your past your new ideas if they are serving the final version or just let go. On the side. Or put them aside for now. Or just letting go of them because they are not the right thing. Or giving them to others. This can be also a nice thing. It's up for me, maybe it's for you. Take it. But yes, I think that's why it helps you. Yes, I think these are the two things really like motivation and focus. The vision helps you to be more performant and not just looking out of thin air. Yes. I don't know if it answers your question.

[25:17] Katie: Yes, absolutely. I love what you said about it helps you not to waste time or money or energy or any of that because you know what you're focusing on. That's also how I feel about focus in general and why clarity is so important when we move forward. And then fantastic what you said about vision being a great tool against procrastination. So it gives you that inner fire, that boost for motivation and therefore you're a lot less likely to procrastinate. You also said earlier on that the vision was a great tool for decision making because if you need to make a decision, you just check is this aligned with does this make sense? Is this aligned with the direction? Is this aligned with what I want to be doing? And if it isn't, then you can just say no. And if it is, you can incorporate it. And again, another really interesting aspect was how very creative people and visionaries have so many different ideas. I can definitely relate to that. And how if we have a clear vision, it's easier to be more selective about what we choose to focus on and work on.

[26:20] Delphine: Yeah, it gets easier to choose to. And you can do it without fear and without guilt. Because I know well, this is from my experience that when I had IDs, I was like, if I let go of IDs, I felt guilty. Maybe they were worth it, maybe it was the right way. Because I used to experience a lot of different paths before I found mine. And so I was always like, wow, the next big ID. And after a while I was always frustrated. Disappointed because it was not my thing. And when you get that vision, it's okay, it's a nice idea. You see this ID passing by, you acknowledge it, but you don't take it because you have your thing. So you have reinsurance or you on right pass. And this is not my pass. I am missing. You are not missing something. And I think it's quite reassuring. I felt like that.

[27:34] Katie: Yes.

[27:34] Delphine: Less guilt, less fear of missing out. More reassuring. Yes. Of missing out. Exactly. Less FOMO. Definitely. That's not something I was aware of. But speaking with you, I became aware of that. That's interesting.

[27:49] Katie: Really nice. I feel we've covered so many different aspects of vision in terms of our focus and our motivation and tools to go about it. Like that example you gave us about projecting ourselves in ten years and imagining our daily life. And also we found out it's a great tool against procrastination and fear of missing out. So it's almost a wonderful tool for a lot of different things in our life and business and performance. So before we finish this episode, Delphine, would you like to tell us where people can find you?

[28:22] Delphine: Oh, yeah. They can find me on my website, which is Delphine flurry.com, I think. Well, you will put it in the notes too. They can also find me on the website of my company, which is Eliope.com Heliopee.com.

[28:50] Katie: Yes. And they will both be in the notes of the show. Thank you so much for being on the show today, Delphine.

[28:56] Delphine: Thank you for your wisdom.

[28:59] Katie: Thank you.

[29:00] Delphine: Thank you so much. Kelly bye.

[29:03] Katie: Thank you for listening to the Focus B show. We would love to hear your feedback. Let us know in a review how this episode inspired you. Keep buzzing.