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What's your personal vision? - Do you even have one?
In business we are used to having objectives and a plan set out to achieve them. Quarterly, monthly and weekly plans are tools that are commonly used. Even daily ‘to-do-lists’ are the norm.
At a level above this, organisations and businesses have vision or mission statements. They do this to help their people understand the company’s purpose and overarching objectives.
The company vision or mission statement helps to make things tangible, to put things into the conscious awareness of their staff and in the minds of their customers too.
But our jobs and the companies we work for are only part of our lives. We’re all familiar with the expression ‘we should work to live, not live to work’ - right? So why is it that so many of us leave the personal aspect of our lives to complete chance.
Most of us (and until a few years ago I would include myself in this category) don’t have a similar plan or vision for our own personal lives. There’s no to-do-lists, no objectives, no plan. We just wander from week to week, from month to month and from year to year. Certainly that’s sometimes how it can feel.
Here's how things changed for me. Around three years ago I was lucky enough to attend a leadership course. Unlike many other courses I’d been on previously, this one was really resonating with me. It was simple, used a building block approach to learning and most importantly for me, it was really sinking in.
Towards the end of the second day of the programme, we came to an element of the course called visioning. Whilst I’d heard of it (being used by athletes and sports stars) this was not something I’d done before. To be completely honest about it, I was more than a little skeptical.
We were asked to imagine the best six months of our lives. Not six months that we'd already had, but six months at some point in the future. We were encouraged to think without limitation, to cast aside any limiting beliefs. Anything was possible.
We split into pairs and each of us talked for around 15 minutes describing at a really deep level what those six months were like. Without question it felt unnatural and a bit weird, but once I got into my stride, I was away with it.
My ‘vision buddy’ took high level notes recording my out loud thinking. They were capturing uninterrupted pure thinking and without even realising it, starting to pull together several themes which would later form my vision.
I talked about being in a lovely modern landscaped garden, with my friends wandering in and out, the gate opening and shutting frequently, the sun beaming down with lovely blue skies, the smell of the barbecue against a backdrop of chatter and laughter. I visualised traveling, both for work and pleasure and I was completely content with my lot.
I imagined delivering leadership training, just like the course I was on, all over the world, meeting new people and inspiring them to become great leaders. I described being completely at ease with myself and loving every minute of it. The balance of my work and personal life was fantastic. I imagined a sense of fulfillment.
After 15 minutes we switched over and repeated the exercise. It was my turn to listen intently without interruption, allowing the other person to imagine anything was possible. No interjection whatsoever, this was entirely about their thoughts. My purpose was to be there to encourage them to think big, just by listening intently.
Having a visual reminder of your vision is important. They can take many forms. They can be a bullet list, sketches, or just a few key words. It’s entirely up to you. The idea is to try and get your vision down in a way that is vivid and then keep it somewhere near you where you will see it every day, ideally more frequently than that. It could be on the inside of your wardrobe door, on your dressing table or perhaps on your home office wall, wherever you’ll see it regularly.
Making sure your vision is visible helps to keep it at the forefront of your mind. That’s really important to get the maximum benefit from this exercise. When you’re consistently seeing your vision, it allows you to question your choices and actions, helping to keep you on track. It seems to me that you almost do this at a subconscious level.
With this in mind, we were urged to write up our visions as quickly as possible after the session and then when we got home to place them somewhere prominent where we would see them every day. I narrowed mine down to seven areas of my life and chose to do some cartoon sketches to bring it alive.
We were also encouraged to change the location of our visions every few weeks, so that they didn’t start to become part of the furniture. Keeping them prominent so that they are at the front of the mind is important.
No doubt some of you reading this will be thinking how on earth can a vision make a difference. Before I tried it, I was in the same place. Here’s my thoughts on why it works.
A vision inspires you to try new things. It guides your choices and gives your efforts a clear purpose. This purpose, or as lots of people refer to it these days, their ‘why’, connects you with your core values, the things that really make you tick. Your vision is the key to unlocking your deepest motivations.
Here is why I really think it works. We all lead extremely busy lives these days. There’s all sorts of stuff going on around us, 24 / 7 / 365. Things are passing us by every day without us even realising. For me that’s where visioning comes in.
When you have something at the forefront of your mind, something that you want to achieve, the opportunities, the same ones that have always been out there, present themselves to you much more clearly. Because you know what you want, because you brought your vision into your conscious awareness, the opportunities stand out and become more obvious. They crystalise in your mind and you can clearly see new ways of achieving your goals. From a business perspective this can also work at a company or team level.
Three years on, although COVID has put a barrier firmly in the way of my garden social plans, I now have my own business running leadership training programmes, not just here in the UK, but abroad too (albeit by zoom for now). Big chunks of my vision have been realised.
Because I’d completed my vision, I spotted new opportunities and grabbed them, moving closer toward my vision. If I’d not done a vision, I’d simply have been blind to the opportunities. They would have passed me by, and I’d not be doing what I am today.
I’d sum it up like this. When we don’t have a clear vision of what we want, we have no idea why we’re doing what we're doing, nor indeed where we are headed. We haven’t even defined what we want. Put simply, without a vision we stumble from one thing to the next.
So, for the doubters out there, I’d urge you to give personal visioning a go. Find yourself a partner, write up your vision and see if it works for you.
I’d love to hear your thoughts on this.
Find Gherkin on LinkedIn at
https://www.linkedin.com/company/gherkin-associates-ltd
Helping People and Businesses Thrive
Glenn Smith – Gherkin Associates Ltd
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