What Would You Like to Have/Do/Be in the Future? Part 2

Envisioning a personal Vision Statement

“The soul never thinks without a picture.”

—Aristotle

The Visioning Process: Your Current World

    To carry out the formal aspects of visioning, find a quiet place at a time when you are well-rested, nourished, and have little likelihood of being interrupted. You may wish to have music playing quietly in the background. While a little wine may facilitate visioning, too much alcohol will undermine the process.

Above  all, do your personal visioning alone.

    Start the visioning process by getting 10 to 20 large sheets of paper (ideally, flip-chart size) and a handful of sharp pencils—or, better yet, a collection of felt-tipped pens in a range of your favorite colors. You may wish to use large flip-chart-sized Post-Its, so you can write on them and then stick them to the wall. You will be able to see all of your work at one glance, relate one sheet to another, and merge the data easily.

    Next, review your completed worksheets from your endeavors to in past Newsletters.

     To facilitate the process of visioning, it is usually best to start with mid-term goals; that is, goals that should be completed successfully in up to five years. You will soon realize that many of your life’s goals will cover a span of time well beyond five years. Some must be done as soon as possible.

    Start by making a list of all the things that are positive in your current life on the right side of this Current Data Sheet. This can be as long a list as you wish. List everything that gives you pleasure, that gives you a “feel good” response. List everything that makes you proud of yourself. Look first at your body, mind, and soul, then into your resources and your world. Consider relationships with family, friends, education, career, society in general, and God. Simply put, look on the brighter side of life.

    On the left side of the Current Data Sheet, using the most dramatic colored pen you have, make a list of the negatives in your life. Consider the same areas or categories as mentioned above. Next to each of these negative or “toxic” aspects of your life, write down some ideas of how you might most effectively eliminate or reduce their impact on your life. While this addresses your future life, you can take advantage of the emotional charge as you list these items.

    By now you have a collection of related and unrelated words and ideas. The next step is to group these entities based on their commonality, both the positive and the negative.

The Visioning Process: Your Future World

    The next step is to create and title separate Facet of Life Sheets, one for each of the major facets of your life. While there are many potential facets in anyone’s life, some of the most common include:

·        Intimate relationships

·        Family

·        Friends and society

·        Education

·        Career

·        Finances

·        Recreation and travels

·        Specific body/mind/soul issue

Addressing each of the positive or negative items on the Current Data Sheet, select and copy to any appropriate Facet of Life Sheets. You will notice that some of these items may be entered on more than one Facet of Life Sheet.

    The next step is to create three separate worksheets, one titled “What I want to Have”, a second “What I want to Do”, and the third “What I want to Be” and prepare spaces in each for entries for short term, mid-term, and long-term. Then enter the selected desires, wishes, and dreams onto their appropriate Facet of Life Sheet.

     Next to each of the desires, wishes, or dreams entered on the Facets of Life Sheets, write down necessary actions needed to attain them.

    While these instructions only constitute several sentences, the process of selecting and entering these items may take time, energy, and emotions and may need to be revisited later.

    The visioning process seeks quantity, not quality. Quantity will breed quality in the next step where you will formulate and prioritize well-defined and specific goals. This process of maximizing the number of dreams, desires, and end results for your life and narrowing them down to a manageable number is like tapping a Vermont sugar maple and boiling the sap down (33:1) to syrup. In the upcoming Goals process, you will reduce the maple syrup to candy.

    Eventually you will be satisfied that you have put on paper all of your dreams and desires as well as the accompanying actions necessary to bring them to fruition. Then merge as many as possible that have commonality. You will probably end up with anywhere from thirty to fifty… even a hundred desirable end results for the next five years of your life. Some may appear to be easily attainable, some very difficult, some even unlikely.

    Keep them all!

The Vision Statement

      Finally, create your personal Vision Statement using a new sheet of paper, allowing space for later updates of your personal, and possibly, organizational Vision Statements. At this point, review your Values and Mission Statements to ensure they are in concert with your Vision Statement. Start with an initial version and revisit it later to update.

Examples of Vision Statements

“I have a dream...”

—Martin Luther King

“There is nothing like

a dream to create

the future.”

—Victor Hugo

“We choose to go to the moon…”

—John F. Kennedy

“If you can dream it, you can do it.”

—Walt Disney

Author’s Suggestions

    The process of visioning your future is exciting and invigorating. It may also be intimidating, for we all share some fear about the future, especially death. The process calls for looking back and then forward as we define our bridge to the future. While only a few of us have a truly “clean slate” in life, the visioning process encourages us to take a fresh view of our lives and to push the envelope of dreams and desires.

    Although you live in the world with others, your dreams are private; so you need to take this journey into your future alone. As in ancient and mythical times, you too, must travel alone on your personal quest. Using the power of Optimize Your Life! , you may wish to take an even deeper journey, the Journey into the Self. For that Quest, you may welcome or need a trusted friend or professional to assist you.

    The current literature and concepts for successful leadership list the role of the leader’s vision as key. Since you are the leader of your life, your vision is of utmost importance to you. Develop it well.

“Champions aren’t made in gyms.

Champions are made from something

they have deep inside them:

a desire, a dream, a vision.”

—Muhammad Ali

“Go confidently in the direction of your dreams.

Live the life you imagined.”

—Henry David Thoreau

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Note:

All worksheets mentioned in these Newsletters

are available in the books available on this web site:

The One-page Strategic Planner: Optimize Your Life

Optimize Your Life! Interactive Worksheet CD Edition 

Optimize Your Life! Workbook Edition