Creating Your Vision of the Future

Creating a solid vision for your future allows you to design your life with a focus on your passions and purpose.  The desires that lie deep within your heart as there for a reason.  As adults, many of us have lost are ability to dream and image.  We've had the "should haves", the "could haves", and the "ought tos" drilled into our heads instead.

Children are born with vivid imaginations about how they would like their world to be.  By early adolescence, unfortunately many have already begun to lose this powerful ingredient that leads us to our life purpose (or our passions).  If you ask a teenager what they want to do for a living, oftentimes they are clueless.  Teaching a child to focus their dreams would be more beneficial rather than telling them what they wish for is impractical, impossible, or absurd. 

How do you learn to regain your vision?  There are many tools one could use to help rebuild your imagination muscle.  By learning to ask yourself the right questions, you can begin to point yourself in the direct of your passions.  Our emotions will also let us know when we are on the right track.  

We need to learn how to move from the heart to the head, rather than from the head to the heart.  Both the head and the heart are necessary to create a powerful vision that can move us in the right direction.  The head is where the senses become involved.  What does that look like, sound like, taste like, smell like and feel like.  A vivid imagination involves the senses.  It is often necessary to relearn your preferences in every situation.  Saying or feeling that you really don't care about this or that will only weak your chances of getting to the right goals. Would you prefer red or black, hot or cold, new or slightly used, milk chocolate or dark chocolate (okay most of us know that one!)

In the Success Principles, Jack Canfield and Janet Switzer provide a guideline to look in very specific areas to define an all encompassing vision.  Areas to examine include:  Finances, Possessions, Work/Career, Free Time/Recreation, Body Image, Relationships, Personal Aspirations, and Community Involvement.  If you follow their approach given in this book, they will ask a lot of very specific questions that help you drill down to what you really, really want. 

In the Unstoppable Women, Cythnia Kersey guides is through the same areas, but her approach is to ask the question, what do you really want, and what are you unwilling to settle for. I have used both approaches to become more focused on my future vision.  

Another approach would be to create the following lists:

• 30 things you would like to have,
• 30 things you would like to do,
• 30 things you would like to be 

before you die.

Without clarity to one's vision, it is impossible to attract the right things into your life leading you to your destination.  

In the Bible it says:

• Ask and you will Receive,
• Seek and you will Find, 
• Knock and the Door will be Opened.  

How can any of this help us?  If we don't know what to ask for, and we don't know what we are seeking, and how in the heck will we knock on the right doors? 

A common error is to start creating goals before one becomes clear on their vision.  What happens is that you move in this direction and then that direction and it never feels like you are making much progress.  Clarity will assist you in creating the shortest distance between where you are and where you want to be.