I'm No Barbara Walters
2 min read
Updated: Jun 5, 2021
If you were a tree what tree would you be?
The infamous question was asked by Barbara Walters during a 60 Minutes interview with Katherine Hepburn. Walters became the butt of jokes for it.
Who asks someone what tree they would be?
Well....me. I’m asking as part of a visualization exercise on goal setting.
A decision tree is a type of flow chart used to visualize the decision-making process by mapping out different courses of action, as well as their potential outcomes.
Committing your thoughts to paper using visualization can help expand your thinking to imagine beyond words.
This exercise can help you recognize:
who you are at your core.
what you’ve created.
where you want to grow.
what you want to cut back on.
what you want to imagine for your future based on the outcomes you want.
Grab a pen and a paper. Drawing a tree on your page starting with the roots, then the trunk and then the branches -- some thick, some thin.
Imagine your beautiful, abundantly blooming tree.
The tree represents the brand of YOU.
The roots of your tree are your values, strengths and skills.
Make a lists of your values, strengths, skills below the surface line the tree sits on. Then, ask yourself, what you are currently doing and going to do to nourish your roots?
The roots feed your trunk, your core. Your trunk represents what people say about you when you leave the room. Your unique value that only you can bring. Write that down with the characteristics and examples to support them.
Even in the biggest of storms, when your core is strong it may sway with the wind but can’t be uprooted.
The branches are where the blooms are born, and where you grow and expand into becoming.
The thick long branches are what you’ve built and created so far for yourself. In this next season, what are the blooms on these branches developing into?
The smaller branches are still in process and what you are working on and creating. What will bloom from them?
What new branches do you want to add?
What branches need to be trimmed?
Or cut off entirely.
Have fun with this exercise….make it colorful. Our thoughts are what create our future, and when we visualize them on paper it takes on a whole new meaning. The more colorful and creative and outlandish we get with our thoughts the greater the possibility of them becoming.
Keep away from thinking the tree represents your job or role at work. You are not your job. You bring your brand of YOU to your job. Your role is an outcome of what you uniquely bring to it.
Today, my friend, commit to being your own role model and laying the seeds for your future. The place where you rediscover joy again. Manage stress. Become who you want to be. It is your turn to help you reignite your mission, fill your calendar with what lights you up.
Don’t wait. Start becoming.