Imagine if you could live your best life, being your best self. Do you have a vision of how that would be for you?
Creating a vision of how you want your future to be helps you clarify what is truly important to you and the personal values you want to uphold and align to in your life.
It creates focus and order that helps combat procrastination and self-doubt and motivates you to progress with courage. It enables you to make informed choices that take you towards your ultimate vision. It gives you a sense of purpose!
However, all too often our vision of how we want our life to look is obstructed by internal barriers. Our inner-gremlins question our ambitious thoughts; “but what if I fail?”, “I can’t achieve that!” , “success is for other people”, “I am not good enough/skilled enough/brave enough ……”
Our thoughts create blockages and obstacles that prevent us from clarifying an inspiring and compelling vision. We end up with a “good enough” image of where we want to get to, something mediocre but attainable and safe that our inner-gremlins will allow us to settle for. But how inspiring is that?
This is where a Visioning Exercise can help! Visioning is an excellent way to keep your inner gremlins at bay and enable you to create an awesome, inspiring vision that will motivate you to take action and build courage to drive yourself towards it.
Visioning puts you in a place in the future where you feel and experience what your future self is doing. You are there! It becomes your present where all potential obstacles have already been overcome. You have already demonstrated the courage, skills and strengths that your inner-gremlins said you were not capable of.
Therefore, instead of being caught up in the “I can’t do that because….” or “it will never work because…” it creates a positive mindset of the achievability of your vision.
Once you define and hold that vision you can then explore, with positivity, how you got there. What obstacles you overcame and how. Giving you the confidence and self-belief to take real action to move forwards.
Develop your Life Vision
Here are 8 steps to inspire your thinking and help you develop your own life vision. Get comfortable somewhere where you won’t be disturbed; maybe start with a few deep breaths to get into a mindful space so you can really focus on this:
1) Picture yourself at a point in the future - you decide the timeline, it may be next year or it may be in 5 or 10 years. You are living your best life - exactly where you want to be. You are living the best possible version of yourself.
2) Focus for a moment on your physical environment:
Where are you?
What does it look like?
What do you see, hear and smell around you?
Who is with you? ……….. or maybe you are alone
What are you doing in this moment?
3) Now bring your focus to how you are feeling at this moment:
What emotions are you experiencing?
How are you feeling about yourself? Mentally, physically, socially
What are you feeling grateful for?
What personal values are you holding and displaying?
What is truly important to you? What is driving and motivating you?
What are you saying to yourself?
4) Take some time to capture in writing, images, or diagrams (however works for you) how this future self and future life is.
5) Next, staying in that future time, where you are living your best life; reflect back on the journey you took to get there, as if it is in the past:
Think about what challenges and hurdles you overcame to reach your vision.
What are you most proud of in this journey?
What shifts and changes did you make - these may be significant or small.
What fears and negative thoughts have you tackled?
What did you shed or leave behind? This may be tasks, actions, emotions or physical things.
What have you continued to do the same?
6) Bringing your mind back to the present, write down the initial small steps you can take today to start moving towards your vision. What are your quick wins? The things that don’t take a huge amount of effort or time, but begin to move you in the right direction. It is often getting started that creates the biggest procrastination!
7) Once you have identified your quick wins and started gaining momentum; look at breaking down the bigger things that stand between you and your vision - the things that may take more time, effort and emotion to overcome. Break these down into bite size actions and steps so they feel more achievable and less daunting.
8) If possible, talk this through with someone you trust so you can hear yourself say your actions out loud. Visioning is a great activity to do in a pair so you can each verbalise what comes up for you.
As you begin this journey be kind to yourself - the road may not be smooth. Notice and celebrate your successes and achievements, and learn from your challenges.
I use visioning techniques with my clients as a powerful tool to help them explore where they ultimately want to be. If you’d like me to support you to develop your life vision and help you find the courage to take action I’d be very happy to have a chat.
Good Luck!!
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