Creating a vision for your life is one of the most effective ways to live the life of your dreams and live a life of purpose. Designing a vision for yourself is more than an exercise. Your vision will give everything else in your life context. It will guide your goals. As you make goals, they will ultimately point in the direction of your vision that you have for yourself. Understanding your vision will propel you toward living your best life.
Taking Control
One of the realities of life is that if you don’t design and develop your own vision with intent, you’re allowing others to do it for you. Having a personal vision is powerful. It directs your decisions, your attention, and your actions. Advertisers and society are constantly fighting to get and keep your attention. There is a battle going on for your mind. If you aren’t intentional with your vision, you’re allowing others to develop your vision for you by controlling your attention and your decision making.
It had long since come to my attention that people of accomplishment rarely sat back and let things happen to them. They went out and happened to things.”
Leonardo DaVinci
Your North Star
The magnetic nature of your vision will cause your goals to always be pointed towards it. Your vision is what guides you throughout your life, gives your goals direction, and gives your actions meaning. You’ll be able to commit to your vision once you develop and understand it. You’ll see how it interacts with your life’s circumstances. You’ll notice where it requires extra effort, and where it feels effortless. Sometimes it will feel like you have a tailwind at your back, sometimes you’ll have to look hard to see it. It won’t always feel easy, but it will always be there, calling you towards it. You can’t lose hope in it.
Designing Your Life’s Vision
Designing a well-defined vision doesn’t happen all at once. It requires time and effort. Cultivating and caring for it requires care and effort as well. Your vision will require designing, planning, and taking intentional action. Your vision grows from your hopes and dreams. It includes your values. It will draw you towards it once you begin to understand it. It will help to strengthen your resolve, giving you strength in the difficult times, and propelling your forward during other times. You have to be intentional about it though.
What do You Want? The Two Chairs Exercise
Set up two chairs in different parts of your room, or on opposite sides of your table. Give yourself a space to journal your answers to this exercise.
Sitting in one chair, answer the question “What do you NOT want from life?” Sitting in this chair, answer this question with all the things that you don’t want. Don’t answer with things that you want, only things that you don’t want.
Once you’ve answered this question, move to the other chair. Now, answer this question, “What do you want?” From this chair, you can only answer this question. You can’t answer with things that you don’t want, only with things that you want. Consider the different aspects of your life.
If you’re a young adult, consider your health, intellectual, spiritual, and social needs. Some possible questions to answer would be:
- How do you want to feel?
- What are your passions? What do you care about?
- What are your values?
- What do you like learning about?
- What makes you feel alive?
- Who’s a part of your ideal life?
If you’re an adult, consider your health, relationship, spiritual, professional, financial, environmental, and joyful needs (since when we become adults, it’s easy to forget about having fun!) Take time to answer these questions. Some possible questions to consider would be:
- How do you want to feel?
- What are your passions? What do you care most about?
- What type of work would you do if money wasn’t a consideration?
- What do you enjoy learning about?
- What makes you feel alive?
- Who is part of your ideal life?
- How do you want to reconcile yourself with your spirituality?
Repeat this exercise by moving back into the first chair and answering the question, “Who do you NOT want to be?” You can only explore the type of person you don’t want to be.
Once you’ve captured your thoughts, move to the other chair, and answer the question, “Who do you want to be?” You can’t answer with who you don’t want to be, only with who you want to be.
The question, “What do you want” is deceptively simple. It’s often easier to think about what we don’t want, or who we don’t want to be. But we have to be able to describe and understand what we DO want out of life, and who we DO want to be. Sometimes, this takes a little bit of extra time and energy. By sitting in different chairs, you literally change your perspective. This exercise is useful if you’re struggling with developing and understanding your vision.
Expectations
It’s important that your vision is a reflection of YOUR needs, dreams, and hopes. Be aware of the expectations that you carry that comes from others. Take time to explore your own hopes. Explore your thoughts and determine if you’re carrying others’ expectations. Oftentimes, we allow the expectations of others to determine our goals and hopes. While some of the hopes of others for our success are helpful, some can be limiting and detrimental.
Ask yourself – What matters to me? Not what should matter, but what does matter?
Your Best Life
What does your best life look like? Describe it in detail. Be creative and include as many details as possible. How does it feel? How does it look? How does it smell? Who’s there? How far in advance are you describing your life?
This is about describing your best life at each of these timeframes. Dream and consider your hopes. As you do this exercise, you’ll start to see the difference between what you consider “practical”, and what you consider “dreams.” Consider your dreams and hopes.
Consider Others
Sometimes, considering the needs of others, not their expectations, but their actual needs, can help to give us purpose and helps to determine our vision. As you’re considering your best life and asking what you want, consider the needs of others. Take a moment and sit quietly. Take a few deep breaths. Who comes to mind? Why? Can you serve them? How? Why? Who do you love? Who loves you? Why? Taking time to consider your relationships and social connections is an important aspect to developing your vision. If you don’t do this, you’ll often find that your vision feels incomplete. Remember, this is about the needs of others and the people you love, not their expectations. There’s a difference, and exploring them is worth the effort.
Take some time to take service and relationships into consideration as you develop and design your vision. While you’re trying to develop your best life, it’s important to remember that it’s not always all about you.
Consider Your Goals
It’s likely that even if you don’t have a vision, you still have some goals for yourself. Write them down. What direction do they point in? Are there things that are common between them? You may find that as you further discover and refine your vision, that your goals may change. You may also find that your goals are informing your vision. The relationship between your goals and your vision is complimentary.
Be Gentle and Consistent
As you go through these exercises and journal any other thoughts and ideas that occur to you, you’ll discover, design, and refine your vision. Write it down, with all of its inconsistencies and imperfections. Life is messy, and that’s okay. Be gentle with yourself. Don’t expect perfection from yourself. Nobody has all the answers. But, once you give your life direction, even if it’s imperfect and messy, you’ll be able to develop goals, objectives, strategies, and take consistent action that will propel you towards your vision. Not everything is going to work, it’s going to be difficult at times, not every day is going to feel like a step forward, and the path won’t always be clear, and that’s okay.
Be consistent, and remember to be gentle with yourself and with those around you.
Your Journal
Your My Purpose Journal and Planner may have sent you to this page. Turn to your journal and work through these exercises. As you do, you’ll discover and further develop your own personal vision.
If you don’t have a My Purpose journal, consider grabbing one for yourself and working through these exercises. The My Purpose Journal and Planner is a great way to design and travel a life of purpose.
Remember
You’ve got this.
