Excellence is a Direction You Face, Not a Destination You Reach
How your vision, anti-vision, & values shape your life
There’s a line often attributed to Michelangelo: “Every block of stone has a statue inside it, and it is the task of the sculptor to discover it.”
What’s less quoted is what that discovery actually requires. It’s not passive. It’s not waiting for the shape to announce itself. It’s picking up the hammer and chisel and starting to chip away - guided by some sense of what you’re looking for, but also willing to respond to what you find. The stone teaches you things you couldn’t have known before you began.
Clarity works the same way.
It doesn’t arrive. It’s not delivered. It emerges through the act of articulation - through asking the hard questions, writing down the answers, refining them as you learn, and living them until they become part of who you are. The work reveals what was always there - but it stays hidden until you begin.
A new year is here - and with it, the familiar pull toward reflection, resolutions, and fresh starts. This essay is an invitation to do something different. Not to set goals you’ll abandon by February. Not to chase someone else’s version of success. But to do the deeper work: to get clear on who you’re becoming, who you refuse to become, and what principles will guide you between the two.
To pick up the hammer and chisel and start.
The Framework for Who You’re Becoming
There’s a version of you that exists somewhere in the future.
Maybe you’ve caught glimpses of this person. In a quiet moment, in a conversation that stirred something, in the gap between who you are and who you sense you could become.
Most people carry this vague awareness around like background noise. They know they want more - more meaning, more alignment, more of the feeling that their days are adding up to something. But “more” isn’t a direction. It’s just dissatisfaction with a positive spin.
The problem isn’t motivation. Most people have plenty of that, at least in bursts. The problem is clarity. They’re trying to navigate without coordinates.
Here’s what changes everything: the people who actually become who they want to be aren’t operating on willpower or inspiration. They’re operating on clarity - a specific, articulated understanding of three things:
Who they’re becoming. This is vision. Not goals, not resolutions, not a list of things to accomplish. Vision is a vivid picture of the person you’re working to become. It’s identity-level clarity.
Who they refuse to become. This is anti-vision - the often-overlooked counterpart. Your anti-vision is an equally vivid picture of the person you’re determined not to be. The path you will not walk. The future you’re actively avoiding. As writer Dan Koe puts it in The Art of Focus, “It’s easier to know what you don’t want - from experience - than it is to know what you want - from imagination.” Your anti-vision draws from what you’ve seen, felt, and lived through. Your vision requires you to imagine something that doesn’t exist yet. Both matter.
What guides their daily choices. These are values. Not inspirational words on a poster, but the actual decision-making filters you use when life gets complicated - when two good options compete, when sacrifice is required, when no one’s watching.
These three elements aren’t separate tools you pull out occasionally. Just like how your sleep affects your training, your mindset affects your nutrition, and your relationships affect your stress, they’re interconnected.
Your vision tells you where you’re headed. Your anti-vision tells you what you’re running from. Your values tell you how to make the thousands of small decisions that either move you toward one or the other.
Robert Glazer, author, entrepreneur, and someone who’s thought deeply about this, offers an analogy in The Compass Within that captures why all three matter.
Imagine driving through a pitch-black tunnel. Without being able to see the lines on the road or the walls, you’d inevitably drift into one side, overcorrect, hit the other, and repeat this painful process until you emerge - car scraped up, shaken, wondering what just happened. Now imagine the same tunnel, brightly lit. You’d stay in your lane without thinking about it.
The lines on the road are your vision, anti-vision, and values - the framework that keeps you moving in the right direction. The light is your awareness of them. And awareness requires articulation.
This is where our friend and well-known mindset coach, Mark England, offers an essential insight. He shared with us a principle called Kidlin’s Law: “If you can write the problem down clearly, the matter is half-solved.” The same is true here. The act of articulating your vision - putting actual words to the person you’re becoming, the person you refuse to become, and the principles that guide you between the two - isn’t journaling for its own sake. It’s how the light gets turned on.
Most people skip this work. They assume they know what they want because they can feel it vaguely. But vague feelings produce vague results. You can’t hit a target you haven’t defined.
This is the foundation on which everything else gets built.
The Practice of Putting It on Paper
Understanding the importance of clarity is one thing. Creating it is another.
This is where most people stall. They nod along with the concept, maybe feel a spark of motivation, then go back to their lives without ever doing the actual work. Not because they don’t care, but because “get clear on your vision and values” sounds simple in theory and overwhelming in practice.
So let’s make it concrete.
The process has three parts: define your vision, articulate your anti-vision, and identify your values. And there’s one non-negotiable rule that runs through all of it: You have to write it down.
Not think about it. Not talk about it. Write it.
Kidlin’s Law applies here with full force - clarity doesn’t exist until it’s been articulated. The act of putting words on paper (or screen) forces precision. It exposes the gaps between what you think you believe and what you can actually articulate. Writing is thinking made visible, and you can refine visible thinking.
But not all writing creates clarity. Vague writing just transfers the fog from your head to the page. For your vision, anti-vision, and values to actually function as tools, what you write must meet three standards:
Specific. Not vague. “I want to be successful” tells you nothing. “I am someone who builds a business that gives me freedom over my schedule and lets me do work I’m proud of.” This specificity gives you something to measure against.
Neutral. Not blame-focused. This isn’t about what others did wrong or what circumstances held you back. It’s about who you are and who you’re becoming - independent of external factors.
Outcome-focused. What does it actually look like? How does this person carry themselves? What decisions do they make? If you can’t picture it, you can’t become it.
These three filters apply to everything that follows. Keep them in mind as you work through each piece.
Vision
Start here. Your vision is a vivid, specific picture of the person you’re becoming.
Not your goals. Not your bucket list. Not what you want to have or achieve. Who you want to be.
The question to sit with: If you became the best version of yourself - if you fully grew into your potential - what would that person look like? How would they carry themselves? What would characterize their relationships, their work, their health, their mindset?
Write in the present tense, as if you’re describing someone who already exists. “I am someone who...” This isn’t delusion. It’s direction. You’re painting a target, so your daily decisions have something to aim at.
Get specific. “I want to be healthy” is too vague to guide anything. “I am someone who prioritizes sleep, moves my body daily, and eats in a way that fuels rather than entertains me” gives you something to measure against.
A few more to spark your thinking:
“I am someone who has energy left for my family at the end of the day - not just the scraps.”
“I am someone who makes time for my health because I know everything else depends on it.”
“I am someone who is fully present when I’m with the people I love - not half-there and checking my phone.”
“I am someone who faces hard conversations instead of avoiding them.”
Anti-Vision
This is the step most people skip - and it might be the most powerful of the three.
Your anti-vision is an equally vivid picture of the person you refuse to become. The future you’re actively avoiding. The path you will not walk, no matter what.
Why does this matter? Because sometimes the pull toward your vision isn’t strong enough to overcome inertia. But the push away from your anti-vision? That can be visceral.
Think about someone you’ve observed - maybe someone you know, maybe a cautionary tale from a distance - whose life represents what you don’t want yours to become. Not to judge them, but to clarify for yourself. What patterns led there? What daily choices? What trade-offs seemed small at the time?
Write it down with the same specificity as your vision. “I refuse to become someone who...” This creates a second filter for your decisions. Some choices clearly move you toward your vision. Others might seem neutral - until you realize they’re edging you toward your anti-vision.
The combination of both pictures - what you’re moving toward and what you’re moving away from - creates a channel for your life to flow through.
A few examples to get you started:
“I refuse to become someone who sacrificed their health for their career - and regretted it.”
“I refuse to become someone whose kids remember them as always stressed, distracted, or too busy.”
“I refuse to become someone who lets fear keep them from starting.”
“I refuse to become someone who woke up one day and wondered where the years went.”
Values
Now the guardrails.
Your values are the principles that guide how you move toward your vision and away from your anti-vision. They’re not aspirational words you’d like to embody someday. They’re operational filters you use to make decisions today.
Glazer suggests a simple test: a real value is something you’d uphold even when it costs you. If “honesty” is a value, you tell the truth even when lying would be easier or more profitable. If “health” is a value, you protect your sleep even when staying up would be more fun or productive. If it only applies when convenient, it’s a preference, not a value.
Most people have too many values on their list, which means they effectively have none. When everything is a priority, nothing is. Aim for three to five. Enough to provide guidance, but few enough to actually remember and apply.
Here’s a process that works:
First, brainstorm. Write down every value that resonates - courage, creativity, family, integrity, growth, adventure, whatever comes up. Don’t filter yet.
Second, pressure-test. For each one, ask: Have I actually sacrificed something for this? Would I? Or do I just like the idea of it?
Third, consolidate. Look for overlaps. Sometimes, five words are really pointing at the same underlying principle.
Fourth, define. This is crucial. Don’t just write “integrity.” Write what integrity means to you, specifically. “Integrity: I do what I say I’ll do, even when no one is watching and even when it’s inconvenient.” That’s actionable. That’s a filter.
A few more examples of values with definitions:
“Presence: When I’m with someone, I’m fully with them. Not planning, not scrolling, not half-listening.”
“Consistency: I show up on the hard days, not just the easy ones - because those are the days that count most.”
“Growth: I choose discomfort that leads somewhere over comfort that leads nowhere.”
When you’re finished, you should have a short list of values with clear definitions - something you could actually reference when facing a hard decision.
The Living Document
One more thing: this isn’t a one-time exercise.
You’re not carving your vision, anti-vision, and values in stone. They’re a living document that evolves as you evolve. The person you’re becoming at twenty-five is different from the person you’re becoming at forty-five. Life experiences will sharpen some values and soften others.
The goal isn’t to get it perfect. The goal is to get it clear enough to be useful - and then refine it over time as you learn more about who you are and who you’re becoming.
And here’s a truth that might lift some pressure: you don’t need to see the whole road.
Remember Glazer’s tunnel analogy from earlier - the idea that vision, anti-vision, and values are like the lines on the road, and awareness of them is the light that lets you stay in your lane? Rían Doris, founder of FlowState, extends that metaphor.
Doris uses his own version: driving cross-country at night. You can’t see the entire route from California to New York. But you can see the next 200 feet illuminated by your headlights. You don’t need the whole picture. You just need enough light to keep moving forward.
Where Glazer’s analogy tells us what the light illuminates - your framework for who you’re becoming - Doris’s tells us how far that light needs to reach. And the answer is: not as far as you think.
Doris shares something a mentor once told him: “I’ve never been certain beyond the next six months. But I’ve been certain about the next six months for twenty years straight.”
He calls these bounded periods “certainty windows” - typically six to eighteen months where you have genuine conviction about who you’re becoming and how you’re getting there. You don’t need to know what your life will look like in 10 years to act with clarity today. You need to know who you’re becoming in the next certainty window - and commit to that fully. Then, when that window closes, you reassess and set the next one.
Your vision can - and probably should - span decades. That’s directional. But your plan for living it? That only needs to fit your certainty window.
Review it regularly. Update it when something shifts. Treat it as a conversation with yourself that continues throughout your life.
As Koe writes: “A plan creates clarity, and clarity creates action.”
The Slow Cost of Not Doing the Work
Let’s be honest about what’s at stake.
This isn’t just about having a clearer sense of direction, though that matters. It’s about the difference between two fundamentally different ways of moving through life.
Without clarity, you drift. Not dramatically - drift is rarely dramatic. It’s subtle. It’s saying yes to things that don’t align because you don’t have a clear reason to say no. It’s optimizing for comfort in moments when growth would have been the better choice. It’s waking up one day and realizing that the life you’re living was assembled by default rather than by design.
Drift doesn’t announce itself. It accumulates. Small compromises compound into significant detours. Years pass, and you find yourself somewhere you never consciously chose - not because you made one catastrophic decision, but because you made a thousand tiny ones without a filter.
Think about health. In a recent episode, Dr. Rich Joseph - a Harvard-trained physician focused on what he calls “drift management” - put it bluntly: the default is decline. Left alone, without intention, systems tend toward disorder. That’s true of your body. It’s true of your life.
Nobody wakes up thirty pounds overweight with a clear sense of when it happened. There was no single meal, no one skipped workout, no obvious turning point. It was years of tiny drifts - an imperceptible number of decisions across an impossible number of days. As Rich describes it, people are “just swimming in their own water.” They don’t see the drift day to day. They still feel like the athlete they were in college - until the objective metrics tell a different story.
The same is true for who you’re becoming. The gap between the person you are and the person you want to be doesn’t open because of one catastrophic choice. It widens slowly, invisibly, one small decision at a time - until you look up and realize you’ve drifted somewhere you never intended to go.
The cruelest part? You’ll be busy the whole time. You’ll have things to do, places to be, responsibilities to manage. Busyness is the perfect camouflage for drift. It feels like progress. It looks like a full life. But activity isn’t the same as alignment, and motion isn’t the same as meaning.
With clarity, something shifts.
You still face hard decisions, but now you have a framework for making them. You still encounter trade-offs, but now you know what you’re trading for and why. The noise quiets, not because there’s less of it, but because you know which signals matter.
When you’re clear on your vision, saying no becomes easier - not because you don’t want things, but because you want something more. When you’re clear on your anti-vision, you recognize the slow slides before they become avalanches. When you’re clear on your values, the hard calls have a built-in tiebreaker.
There’s something else that happens when you have this clarity. Something that learning expert Trevor Ragan helped us see.
Ragan’s work focuses on how people actually grow and improve - and one of his core insights is that the process becomes meaningful when it’s connected to something larger. When you’re just trying to “get better” in the abstract, setbacks feel like failures. But when you’re working toward a clear vision of who you’re becoming, those same setbacks become feedback. They’re not evidence that you’re broken. They’re information about what needs to be adjusted.
This is what a growth mindset actually looks like in practice - not just believing you can improve, but having a clear enough picture of who you’re becoming that improvement has a direction. Challenges stop being obstacles to avoid and start being the training that shapes you. The struggle isn’t separate from the progress. It is the progress.
Without that clarity, growth feels aimless. You might work hard, but toward what? You might learn new things, but in the service of becoming whom? The effort doesn’t compound because there’s no through-line connecting it.
With clarity, every step counts. Even the missteps. Because when you know where you’re going, even getting lost teaches you something worthwhile.
Here’s the real stake: you’re going to spend your time and energy regardless. The question is whether that investment is building toward something you’ve consciously chosen or scattering in directions you never intended.
One path leads to a life that feels like yours. The other leads to a life that just sort of happened.
Both are available. Neither is guaranteed.
The difference is whether you do the work.
The Three Questions That Need Answers
So where does this leave you?
You now have a framework: vision, anti-vision, and values. You understand why clarity matters and what’s at stake without it. You have a process for doing the work.
But frameworks don’t change lives. Action does.
And here’s the part that might surprise you: the action doesn’t need to be dramatic. You don’t need a weekend retreat or a complete life overhaul. You don’t need to quit your job and sell all your things. You need thirty minutes, something to write with, and the willingness to be honest with yourself.
Start with one question: Who is the person I’m becoming?
Write whatever comes. It doesn’t need to be polished. It doesn’t need to be complete. It just needs to be true - or at least, true enough to start refining.
Then ask the shadow question: Who is the person I refuse to become?
Write that too. Let it be uncomfortable. The discomfort is information.
Then ask: What principles will guide me in the space between those two futures?
That’s it. That’s the beginning. Not the end - the beginning.
Like the sculptor at the stone, you won’t see the full shape before you start. The work will teach you things you couldn’t have known before you began.
Because here’s what we’ve learned after years of these conversations: excellence isn’t a destination you arrive at. It’s not a box you check or a trophy you hold. Excellence is a direction you face. A practice you return to. A way of moving through the world that compounds over time.
The person you’re becoming doesn’t emerge from one heroic moment. They emerge from thousands of ordinary ones - each small decision another strike of the chisel, each day removing a little more of what isn’t you, revealing a little more of what is.
Your vision, anti-vision, and values aren’t meant to sit in a drawer. They’re meant to live in your decisions. In the ‘yes,’ you say, and in the ‘no,’ you protect. In the hard conversation you have, and the easy shortcut you skip. In the way you spend your attention, which is really the way you spend your life.
This work isn’t something you finish. It’s something you practice. As Koe writes: “You are the infinite project. You are your life’s work.”
And that practice - the daily act of becoming who you’re capable of being - is the chase.
Not the arrival. The chase.
That’s where excellence lives.
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