Make Your Vision Your Reality
Making Your Vision Your Reality
What do you want? And how close are you to getting it? One way to reduce the stress of feeling "behind" on your goals is to create a Life Vision - a definition of a successful and fulfilling life - which is a life-long pursuit. I've had things on my Life Vision for years that I am finally getting around to, and that is totally OK! So how do we make sure we aren't procrastinating while also not panicking that we are behind?
Alignment
A Life Vision is YOUR definition of a successful, fulfilling life in all aspects: Health, Family, Career, Relationships, Community, and Finances. It is general and not time bound (the opposite of S.M.A.R.T. goals), and it is meant to be directional over your lifetime.
The benefit of your Life Vision is it helps you ALIGN your actions so when you are striving for one area of your vision, you are also meeting other areas (or at least not getting in the way of accomplishing them).
Instead of splitting yourself into six different people to meet everything you want in life, you start to ALIGN the people, places, work, and activities you do.
Some Examples:
If you enjoy being active outdoors (health) and spending quality time with friends (relationships), then you can start asking your friends to go out for a walk or hike instead of always meeting them at a restaurant.
If you love animals and giving back (community), and you are a finance professional (career), you can look for finance jobs in animal health, veterinary services, or other animal-related organizations. If your company has a donation match, you can donate to animal shelters with that match to make a greater impact. And if you love being active outdoors (health), part of giving back can be walking dogs.
If you love to travel (community) and you are a sales/finance professional (career) who loves to experience cultures and great food (health), you could look for a job that includes travel to the regions you are interested in and take cooking classes while you are there.
My Example:
I love to be active and spend times outdoors (health), while raising my sons to be global citizens who know people who live, look, and love differently than we do through travel and hands-on experiences (family). I love meaningful, connected relationships (relationships), and to give back in a meaningful way (community). I empower others to put their needs first in order to make a positive impact on the world by giving from their overflow instead of emptying themselves out for others (career), and I want to ensure I earn enough to be financially independent (finance).
I've worked a lot on most of those over the past 7 years since I've clarified my Life Vision. Yet my family and I haven't traveled internationally much at all, so the Global Citizens line item hasn't been filled.
This week we leave for our European vacation! It took a while, between covid and work priorities and moving, but we are finally doing it! Our trip includes many fun outdoor activities together, experiencing different cultures and people, and time to restore ourselves so we return feeling full and empowered instead of exhausted and empty.
The point in me sharing this? You can't work on all your goals at the same time. Especially in the beginning when your energy is scattered across your responsibilities.
But with clarity on your vision and intentional decision making, you can start to align a lot more of your actions, so you feel more fulfilled and more at ease on a regular basis. You can meet more than one goal with one action, creating real synergy.
This is your LIFE. And this is your LIFE VISION. It takes time to align and meet it. No reason to rush through life feeling frantic.
On the other hand - our lives are precious and we aren't guaranteed tomorrow. So ensuring you are intentionally making decisions aligned with your Life Vision each day is important.
You won't be hitting every category every day, but you can make progress on at least some.
And it helps to be able to see that while you may not be meeting one category (let's say you get laid off, so now the career line item is suffering), you can succeed at others (spending time with family and friends, focusing on your health, and being a part of your favorite community). This really helps clients with perspective and prevents them from falling into the pit of despair.
You deserve to live a life you love. And you absolutely can - IF, and only if - you are clear on what you want and you take aligned action towards it.
A successful, fulfilling life doesn't happen by chance. Your stress isn't going to just disappear. You are going to (hopefully) wake up at 80 years old and either love what you've done, or regret what you didn't.
I refuse to regret. I am living my life to the fullest TODAY, without frantically pushing. I'm ALIGNING with my vision, and it feels amazing!
Cheers to your alignment,
Sharon
Let's Create YOUR Life Vision
You are not alone. I help clients define what a fulfilling, successful life looks like in all aspects - your health, career, family, relationships, finances, and community - and create a pathway to achieve it.
I offer a Life Vision Intensive - a 2-hour session where we define your success and core values - and I return it to you in a concise document. Clients from years ago have shared how helpful this tool has been as they go after their dreams and reach success after success.
Its $350. That's it. To book, schedule a free, confidential strategy call by CLICKING HERE (Choose Free Strategy Session) and we can ensure this is right for you and schedule it in September.
Life is too short to keep putting off what you really want. Don't stay stuck feeling stressed, overwhelmed, and unsatisfied. I've helped so many improve their happiness, well-being, and success because they chose to schedule a call and take one step towards the life of their dreams. I can help you too.
