Vision
Contents
Developing a Personal Plan
Sample Vision Statement
Create a Mood Board
Self-reflection
Overview
Your personal vision represents your long-term aspirations and goals, it's essentially a vivid and inspiring image of what you want their future to look like. Developing a personal vision is a foundational step in life coaching as it provides direction and motivation, helping individuals make decisions that align with their deepest values and desires.
Developing a Personal Vision
Creating your personal vision helps you lead a purposeful life matching you their true self and values, guiding you toward significant achievements. Please find below the main themes you need to consider:
Self-Reflection: The process begins with deep self-reflection. You are encouraged to consider your values, passions, and what truly brings you joy and fulfilment. This often involves introspective activities such as journaling, meditation, or guided reflection exercises to explore personal strengths and weaknesses, likes and dislikes, and core beliefs.
Dream Big: In this step, you are prompted to think beyond current limitations and imagine your ideal future without barriers. This could involve envisioning where you want to be in 10, 20, or even 30 years in terms of personal life, career, achievements, and contributions to society. Dreaming big helps to outline a broad and ambitious scope for what you wish to achieve.
Clarify Vision: Once broad dreams are established, the next step is to clarify and specify these dreams into a focused vision. This might involve prioritising certain goals or redefining them to be more realistic and aligned with personal values. You can use tools like vision boards, mind maps, or goal-setting frameworks like SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) goals to assist in this process.
Describe your Vision: Describing your vision clearly is an important stage. It involves using motivating language, often writing your goals down as a vision statement. This statement should be inspiring and detailed enough to provide clear guidance but flexible enough to allow for adjustments as circumstances change.
Alignment Check: It's important to ensure that your developed vision aligns with the your core values and current life situation. This might require revisiting and adjusting your vision to reflect any new insights or changes in life circumstances. Consistency between your values and their vision is key to maintaining motivation and preventing defeat.
Action Plan: With a clear vision in place, the next step is to break it down into actionable steps. This involves planning short-term goals and specific actions that will lead to the realisation of the vision. Life coaches often assist with setting timelines, identifying necessary resources, and anticipating potential challenges.
Regular Review and Adaptation: Finally, it’s essential to regularly review and adapt your vision and the action plans. Life is dynamic, goals, aspirations, and circumstances can change. Reviews help ensure that your vision remains relevant and motivating as time passes and new experiences are gained.
Sample Vision Statement
"My vision is to build a stable and fulfilling career that not only provides financial security but also allows for personal growth and job satisfaction. I aspire to be recognised in my field and to achieve a level of expertise that ensures job security and a good salary, helping me provide a comfortable life for my family. I am committed to lifelong learning and plan to take advantage of training and development opportunities that will help me advance professionally and personally.
Outside of work, my goal is to maintain a healthy balance that allows me to enjoy my hobbies and spend quality time with my family and friends. I aim to be a present and supportive partner and parent, actively participating in my children’s education and extracurricular activities. Community involvement is also important to me, and I see myself taking on a more active role in community projects and local events.
Ultimately, I want to retire with a sense of accomplishment and financial stability, having saved enough to enjoy my retirement years without financial worry. Throughout my life, I strive to be a role model for work/life balance, resilience, and kindness, inspiring my children and those around me to pursue their own goals and contribute positively to our community."
Create a Mood Board
Creating a mood board can be a powerful tool to visualise your goals, aspirations, and desired feelings. Here's a simple step-by-step guide to creating a mood board:
Define Your Vision: Start by confirming what you want to focus on with your mood board. This could be a specific area of your life like career, relationships, personal growth, or a combination of several aspects. Write down key themes or words that represent your goals and aspirations.
Gather Your Materials: Collect materials that you can use to build your mood board. These can include:
- Magazines, brochures, or newspapers for cutting out images and words.
- Printed photos or images from the internet.
- Fabric swatches, paint chips, or material samples.
- Decorative items like stickers or washi tape.
- A poster board, cork board, or a digital platform if you prefer creating a mood board online using tools like Pinterest or Canva.Find Inspiration: Look for images, quotes, and items that match your vision and encourage positive emotions. These elements should match the themes you’ve identified and help visualise your desired future. The images might include places you want to visit, lifestyle scenes, symbols of success, or words that motivate you.
Arrange Your Board: Start placing your collected items on the board. Arrange and rearrange these elements until you feel that the layout reflects your vision. There’s no right or wrong way to do this, what matters is that the board speaks to you and your goals.
Anchor with Key Images and Words: Place the most significant images and words in central positions on the board to serve as focal points. These key elements should stand out because they represent your primary aspirations and serve as daily reminders of what you aim to achieve.
Refine and Adjust: As you start to see your mood board take shape, make adjustments as needed. Remove items that don’t fit as well as you thought they would, and add new elements that better capture your intentions. This is a dynamic process, your mood board can evolve as your vision does.
Display Your Mood Board: Place your mood board somewhere you will see it regularly, such as your bedroom, office, or another personal space. The idea is to keep your goals visually and emotionally present in your daily life to maintain motivation and focus.
Reflect and Update Regularly: Periodically return to your mood board to reflect on your progress towards the goals it represents. Feel free to update it as your goals evolve or as you find new sources of inspiration. This helps keep the mood board relevant and ensures it continues to inspire and motivate you.
Self-reflection
Self-reflection is a valuable skill that helps you understand your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours better. Here’s a simple guide to self-reflect effectively:
Set Aside Time: Choose a regular time and quiet space where you won’t be disturbed. This could be a few minutes each day or a longer session once a week.
Choose a Focus: Decide what aspect of your life you want to reflect on. It could be a recent event, a particular area of your life (like work, relationships, or personal growth), or your feelings and reactions to something specific.
Ask Yourself Questions: Start with open-ended questions to explore your topic. Some examples include:
> What am I proud of?
> What could I have done better?
> What did I learn from this situation?
> How did I feel, and why?
> What does this mean for me?
Write It Down: Journaling can be a helpful tool for self-reflection. Writing down your thoughts and answers can make them clearer and give you something to look back on.
Be Honest and Open: Try to be as honest as you can with yourself. This might be challenging, especially if it involves admitting mistakes or confronting uncomfortable feelings, but it's crucial for effective self-reflection.
Look for Patterns: Over time, try to notice patterns in your behavior or thinking. Do you react the same way in certain situations? What triggers negative or positive feelings? Recognizing these patterns can help you understand what changes you may want to make.
Make a Plan: Based on your reflections, think about what steps you can take to improve or respond differently in the future. Set small, achievable goals for yourself.
Regularly Review: Come back to your previous reflections periodically. This can help you see how far you've come and what areas still need attention. It's also a way to hold yourself accountable for the changes you planned to make.