Tag: vision

Setting up a vision for yourself

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eye of the gerberaFirst of all, when thinking about drafting your vision, you have to consider the context in which it will be used. Are you trying to establish a:

  • Personal Vision
  • Professional Vision or
  • Holistic Vision, encompassing everything you do and represent/are?

You can have several visions, depending on the different contexts you are looking at. Visions are not set in stone, they have to be revisited from time to time in order to see whether they need adjustment or whether they still feel right for you.

As you start thinking about what matters to you, putting yourself into the context, you might want to embrace the bigger picture, let yourself consider how you move through this world and who you are, i.e. what counts for you. Which qualities are important in your life? Is it empathy, creativity, openness? Try to make a list of these, max. 5 so that there still is meaning for you. Do you feel connected to these qualities? How do they feel like for you?

According to Personal Leadership, a powerful vision should have 5 Ps:

  1. Personal: it is your vision, write it with an ‘I’. You are the actor!
  2. Present: it is not a dream nor a wish list for the future. Write it in the present tense and live it NOW.
  3. Positive: as when working with affirmations, rather write I am, I do etc. than I don’t, I am not… this will have a much more powerful effect.
  4. Passionate: you need to listen to your body here; how does it feel like when you read out your vision to yourself? How does it feel like when you read it out to somebody else? Can you feel its power? Or do you need to adjust it a little bit?
  5. Purpose: It is all about being, not about doing. It is about your internal state and the bigger picture of your intentions as well as about your ‘highest and best. Try to imagine the difference your way of being will make to your environment, or even broader, the world.

As the Personal Leadership book summarizes very nicely: “The power in a vision comes from choosing to live in alignment with it. Use your vision as a beacon, a support, a compass. Live your vision in everything you do!”[1]

Please don’t hesitate to contact me if you need help with finding and identifying your vision. It doesn’t matter how you express it actually. You might want to draw it or paint it; maybe you want to record it or write it down. Whatever feels right to you!

Enjoy the rest of your day/evening/night. Thanks for reading, Jenny

[1] B.F. Schaetti, S. J. Ramsey, G.C. Watanabe: “Personal Leadership – Making a World of Difference”, Seattle 2008, page 118.

 

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The power of having a vision in your life

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You will most certainly already have come across somebody in your life who told you that maybe you should be writing down your vision or what is sometimes also called “your personal mission statement”. If you are like me, the first time you heard that, you might have thought: “why would I possibly want to do that?”.

The answer to that question is easy (so easy that we might even not think about it):

  • Having a vision can unleash the very best in you as it makes you strive towards it (like athletes do in sports).
  • Our personal visions can comfort us in difficult times or times of stress. They bring us back into alignment with ourselves.
  • Finally, our vision can also guide us through choices and decision making processes.

    If your vision is based on your own deep values as it should be, living following its principles will not only motivate and energize you, but as research has shown, make you more persistent, performing, and creative than other peers who don’t have a vision.

    Being currently in Vienna and following a “Personal Leadership” Foundations seminar, I will also have to write down my own personal vision tomorrow. Although I have done so in the past, it is certainly time for me now to revise it and renew my commitment to follow it.

    Stay with me for this new journey of self-discovery as I will walk you through the different steps to undertake when drafting a mission for yourself and taking ownership of your life! Jenny