A PERSONAL VISION TO UNLEASH YOUR GREATNESS!
Creating your personal vision, gives your life direction. It is the underlying heading you take, which may take you through winding paths, turns, (u-turns even!)….but you’re overall heading in a general vector– until you, or something changes that direction. The other part is purpose– the ‘why’ or engine that’s driving you in that direction. You can either go fast or slow– but think of it as power. The two are interconnected. Personal vision has an underlying purpose. I believe you can either control it by taking conscious action, and training your sub-conscious to keep you on track; or you can be passive and reactive to your environment and BE steered. I’ve learned a few simple areas to start to formulate that purpose and vision, and even reconfirm what we believe already.
Those who have been following my blog series, ‘4 New Life Leadership Principles for Living Big’, my last post took a dive into Principle#1: Know Where You Are and provided a fit/gap analysis guide to assessing your current situation in providing a baseline to working out your purpose, your personal vision. I continue this series with ‘Life Leadership Principle #2: Create Your Personal Vision’.
V = D + A
A ‘dream’ is only a dream if nothing happens when you wake up in the morning. However a ‘vision’, is simply a dream with action. In other words: Vision = Dream + Action, or V = D + A. Everyone has dreams in life: what they want, who they want to become. But few have a vision of themselves which is acting out with deliberate planning, consistent effort and hard work in attaining that dream. The other difference between a ‘dream’ and a ‘vision’ is importance. If it’s not important to you, you’ll keep dreaming about it. But if it is, if you have the hunger and desire, you will make yourself attain that dream. You may need to transform yourself into the person you need to become, in order to get what you want, because who you are currently may not be enough. The more specific the vision, the greater the power it will have in driving you to do what it takes. Best way to get started is whether you can describe and visualize what does that vision look like? Can you see the images of attaining that kind of life you envision for yourself? Being able to vacation whenever without filling out a personal leave form and asking your boss for approval; giving your child absolute choice in deciding which university to attend regardless of tuition and living expenses; speaking on the stage motivating hundreds of raving fans; retiring your parents early; buying the house of your dreams; contributing to the causes that you believe in—what would all this look like to you? And most important, what does this FEEL like? Feeling, emotions, spiritual self as I’m sure you know or heard, can manifest your desires into reality. They’re really really powerful.
‘There is greatness within you. But you will never discover it in your comfort zone‘ — Les Brown
My ’10 Steps to Purpose’ guide may help reveal your life purpose and vision. You can get this FREE OF CHARGE by following the instructions at the end of this post.
5 AREAS TO DEFINE YOUR GOALS
Goals are useless unless they have a time limit. So define what they are for you, and give yourself a deadline. I’ve learned over the past year, to define goals in these 5 areas. It ensures that you are moving in unison, and so that other areas don’t get compromised like the cliché successful CEO who has ruined his family, divorced 3 times, for the sake of his financial and corporate success…and his kids don’t talk to him anymore! It’s great when your success is celebrated together with your family; you are stressed free and emotionally light; in top health so you can enjoy your rewards for as long as possible; you don’t have to worry about money ever again focussing your time on the most important things you care about; and that you’re a respected figure giving back to your community surrounded by lots of friends.
1. SPIRITUAL & FAMILY
This is a huge area and very personal to each of you. I’m happy to share the areas I have identified to correct towards my personal vision which were gaps between my old situation and the vision of the person I want to become. I do have skeletons…but they’re now ‘all out of the closet’– especially after I publish this post!.
I was a successful, very well paid corporate executive that underwent a rude awakening when all that ended. I’m not a patient person, often hurting the people around me with my frustration. I’m naturally inclined to be negative where I need to see the flip side of situations in order to become positive and giving. I went through a divorce, rarely see my son who lives in another country, got remarried and now treasuring every moment I have with my 9-year old daughter. My faith suffered years of neglect; my personal learning and development lagged as I was way too inside my comfort zone in my job. My biggest learning has been what I feed my mind, transforms into reality. Self-awareness is a great beginning; you’ll know what you want to change…and JUST GO DO IT.
2. MENTAL & EMOTIONAL
This is typically related to your current level of stress that you may be concerned about. Stress is unavoidable—it’s reality. And it’s not getting better. How you deal with stress is however 100% within your control. How you react to your external environment is much to do with your programming, values and belief system. Your mind is just reacting naturally to the way it was programmed to do so. This is a much broader topic of ‘programming’ which is pretty deep. I’ve been through and still going through a lot that relates to my goal and attitude to the concept of money. This was due to my father in particular, being very conservative, risk-adverse, provided superbly well for his family but always worried about money. Wealthy people, including rich family friends, were often jokingly remarked: ‘Ahh, they’re so filthy rich’. It was as if having lots of money was dirty? For many years, even though I was paid well, I continuously complained of expenses even though I enjoyed spending, but also worried about the future whether I would have enough for my family. I still wrestle with this today, but I’m getting pretty good and turing the volume down on that little annoying voice, as I’ve learnt to deal with it by setting mental and emotional re-programming goals.
3. PHYSICAL & HEALTH
Are you overweight/underweight? Do you have any bad habits that would impact your health short-/mid-/long-term that will mean NOT being able to enjoy your success? Are you recovering from a medical condition? Or maybe it’s about just maintaining the good health you do have. When you have a vision of yourself, you’ll want to enjoy it as long as possible once you achieve it. What state of physical and health condition are you aiming for? Perhaps it’s simply dropping a few pounds and maintaining this in 4 months time, or eliminating certain foods for an extended period of time to regain energy. Or that dreaded promise at the start of each year that you would exercise regularly. Yes, I’m guilty of that! You already know the answer to this goal.
I smoked for over 10 years. It was a goal I said I would eventually quit, and always kidded myself that I could do it anytime. Well, I realized I was addicted. But on December 2, 2014, I made that final decision…because of my business and the vision I wanted to have, which included a health goal. More on this in later blog posts on ‘Life Leadership #4: Invest in Yourself’ about keeping your mind on the goal.
4. FINANCIAL & SECURITY
Probably the biggest, highest priority to any individual, is to be financially free and independent. Money is merely a tool that enables us options. What would this look like? How much money would you like to attain by what age, what timeframe? The more important question is, how big is your residual income after you no longer need to work for a paycheck, to be able to live long at the quality standard you dream of. Residual income is simply money that comes in consistently and grows, less your expenses..and you still have lots to spare to live your life! It’s way better than a pension plan. Being an investor provides this, property rental (but you’ll need several to be substantially wealthy), or owning a business system you built over time that generates revenue and income for you regardless of whether you work on your business or not. Best read on this subject is ‘CashFlow Quadrant’ by Robert Kiyosaki.
5. SOCIAL & FRIENDS
How would you like to make a difference to society, or your contribution to the charities you believe in? What does true friendship mean to you—quality vs. quantity? Are there people in your life that you need to make peace with? What kind of relationship will you have with your spouse?, Children? You need conscious and consistent plans and actions to work to ensure you can attain what you answered in the previous questions. Remember, it doesn’t just happen; that would be dreaming.
Put a ‘to do’ list against your dreams, framed around your goals. This creates your vision. It may be blurry at first, but through time, perseverance, a commitment to regular action, and you’ll begin to crystalize your future….and of course, they may be adjustments along the way.
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