Recently, I bought my first home. Before that was months of being in the market to buy a house. My wife and I each had our own list of criteria.

There were things that were non-negotiable. For me, these included things like:

• The location. We only wanted to live in certain areas.
• The land. It needed to have some space and be close to nature.
• A big garage for a gym.
• A space for an office, with enough separation from the rest of the house.
• The price. We had a ceiling in what we could get as far as a mortgage loan.

We looked at a lot of houses. Probably physically went to 30 or 40 over the span of a few months. (It was a crazy time that I’m very happy to be done with!)

One thing that we ended up with, that was not on either of our lists, was an amazing view.

I love this expansive view because it is visionary. That’s an interesting word that I’ve been thinking about lately.

In business, they often talk about visionary leaders. Some of the prototypical ones of these are guys like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk.

The definitions of visionary:

1. (especially of a person) thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom.

2. relating to or able to see visions in a dream or trance, or as a supernatural apparition.

I like both of these definitions.

And so, when I saw this view that I knew that living at this house, with the visionary view, would help me to become even more visionary.

How could it not?

Indeed, a friend of mine said the same thing to me.

And right around the time of waiting through escrow on the hous I was reading through Les McKeown’s book, The Synergist. (I’ll be talking about his earlier book in a future post.)

In it he discusses four different operational styles. The Visionary. The Operator. The Processor. And the Synergist.

Guess which type was highest for me? Visionary.

You can take a test to see how you stack up right here. (It’s free, though you have to signup with email address at the end to get your results.)

I had all my partners and employees take the test, and have also recommended it to other business owners in a couple mastermind groups I take part in.

In business, as well as everywhere else, it is important to know yourself.

It is also important to know where you want to go. In the future, I plan to be even more visionary. And it is great to have an amazing environment to support doing that.

Thinking, being imaginative, coming up with ideas, meditating while sitting out there overlooking the view.

We’re all products of our environment far more than many people realize. Plenty of studies showing how small environmental cues will shift habits, behaviors, even what we think.

That’s why it is very important to setup your environments for what you want.