Four Qualities That Define a Visionary

Recently, someone reached out and asked me why I call myself a “visionary.” It’s a great question.

It’s popular to claim the title “visionary,” especially when you’re positioning yourself as a leader. After all, vision seems like an important thing to have. But what does it even mean to be a visionary? And how dare I, a mere book midwife, call myself that?

I can’t tell you what other people mean by it, or how they come to call themselves that, but here are four keys to how I came to be a visionary, and why I claim the title.

1. Natural Inclination

I have always been a dreamer.

My mom used to joke that I marched to the beat of my own drummer, and my dad had a nickname for me based on the fact that I was always walking ten steps behind everyone else, lost in my own world.

Dreaming.

Some folks are naturally inclined to think big thoughts and dream big dreams. Some folks are more inclined to focus on details and process and execution. There’s nothing wrong with how your brain is wired. It’s what makes you, you.

Mine just happens to be wired for dreaming and seeing big pictures.

2. Attunement

It’s not enough to simply want to be a visionary, you have to attune to the visionary frequency.

For me, this means a lifelong journey of training, meditation, shadow work, and trauma clearing. It’s becoming the “hollow bone,” able to hear and see visions as they come through. You have to be able to see beyond yourself and all your little hangups to something bigger, wider, deeper, more important than the details of day to day life or the paradigm in which you live.

You need visionary skills.

I’ve studied with Indigenous teachers in ancient modalities, as well as teachers of more modern mystical and esoteric traditions. I’ve done my own shadow work (an ongoing process), and I’ve trained in shamanic journeying.

I read widely, watch the patterns of the world unfold, and think deeply about both current events and the broad sweeps of history. 

Human nature, biology, chemistry, brain science, business, systems, philosophy, literature, history, and psychology are among the many topics I constantly study and update my understanding of.

I invest in personal coaching, in training, and in a constant pursuit for what I might be missing that would make everything make more sense, work better, or lead to a more beautiful world.

I treat being a visionary like the profession and the calling that it is.

3. Time

Visions don’t come on demand.

They require time to unspool themselves.

You have to give yourself large blocks of unhurried time to allow your visions to unfold inside yourself.

This is why I charge my clients a premium. Because you can’t contain what I do inside an hour or two or ten. Nobody gets my hours.

What you get when you work with me is space inside my visionary brain.

My clients are never not on my mind, either consciously or unconsciously.

They’re on my mind while I’m writing this blog post. They’re on my mind while I’m doing routine maintenance on my fish tanks. They’re on my mind while I’m hiking to a hidden waterfall. They’re on my mind while I’m assembling dinner.

I give myself giant blocks of time each week in which to allow my vision to unfold and stretch its wings, time when I’m “busy” doing whatever I feel like while my brain does its visionary work.

Ever had the best idea of your life while taking a shower or driving to the beach or lying around in a hammock?

That. That’s vision. And that’s what it takes: Doing nothing.

4. Prioritization

My primary value to my clients (and myself) is my vision, so I prioritize my vision.

Every Monday morning, I sit down and focus on my vision for myself and my business. This is blocked in my calendar and it is absolutely the first thing I do. Then I meet with my team to share priorities & get our week going. Then I meet with clients and complete any tasks I’ve set out for myself.

On Tuesdays, I putter. I have absolutely nothing on my calendar on Tuesdays, because my brain needs time to unspool everything that happened on Monday.

Then Wednesday, I’m back in the fray. Meeting with clients, completing tasks, doing manuscript reviews.

Sometimes I work very late on Mondays and Wednesdays. 

The most expensive thing I do time-wise is developmental editing (manuscript reviews). These can take ten to twenty hours each. But I still fit them in on Mondays and Wednesdays, even when that makes for a late night.

Because Thursdays and Fridays belong to my visionary brain.

On those days, I get out of the fray again and give my visionary skills time and space to do their work. It’s hard to describe what this “work” is because it doesn’t look like the current paradigm of “work.” It looks a lot more like… listening. Writing. Meditating. Hiking. Shopping. Scrolling. It’s time spent tuned to the visionary frequency specifically.

During this time, I write stories, post essays, do research, and build my following (for me, that qualifies as “visionary” time because it’s something that is fun and easy and outside of the daily “grind” so it still provides scope for my visionary brain to be doing its thing). I take naps, gaze at my fish tanks, do a little pruning in the garden. 

I call it “putter time.”

Sometimes I dip into tasks that look like “work” but they don’t feel like work to me because I’m following my vision, not my to do list.

This pattern of work means that my visionary brain gets the best chunks of my week. It can work its (metaphorical) heart out on Mondays and Wednesdays, applying visionary ability to mundane tasks, because it knows it gets Tuesdays, Thursdays, and Fridays to do what it does best: Dream.

The best value my clients can get is when they invest in multiple manuscript reviews, or the full program, because then they get the benefit of their ideas and their manuscript living in my brain between revisions.

Sometimes I panic and think I better get back on the wheel and run faster, but then I remember that it's not like paddling faster ever actually worked for me.... All my best ideas and most important work have always happened in the silence, never in the noise.

And that’s what it means to me to be a visionary.

And you, do you claim that title? What does it mean to you?