Five Powerful Advantages to Creating Your Own Life Vision
"It's not what the vision is, it's what the vision does" - Robert Fritz
Despite becoming a self-help cliche, creating a vision is an incredible tool to elevate your life. It's not about creating something that the universe will manifest before your eyes with just a dash of daydreaming... That's a load of sh*t! However, it is undeniable that every great leap forward from society to individuals begins with a vision of what could be... Which is then molded by action and feedback; into reality.
What Do I Mean By Vision?
The term vision has been torn seven different ways, but the basic premise is describing, in detail, a story of how your life turns out in the long term (10-25 years). There are many ways to do this effectively; here are two I like:
- Write a letter to yourself from 20 years into the future. Write in the present tense, and be thankful for all the work your current self spent in building your future.
- Simply separate your life into eight areas and then write out how each one will look in 20 years. Again, write in the present tense, be detailed, and be realistic but bold in your ambitions.
Writing out large, ambitious plans will inspire you to imagine a life beyond your current circumstances. It will reveal the path forward and motivate you to elevate your behavior to align with that path. It's vital to effective growth. Here are five valuable advantages to writing your own vision:
1. It Gives You a Why?
Since when are you motivated to complete something without knowing why? Our brain needs reasons to push through challenging endeavors. Once you see the potential rewards, motivating yourself to journey up the ascent will be much easier.
2. It Gives You a Compass
It's less like you're creating a target to chase and more like you're developing an internal compass. By painting a detailed image of your future, you're setting a course for all the actions to follow—a north star to guide you.
3. It Increases The Value of Prescriptions
A prescription, in this context, is the advice received from any form of media. Often books, videos, classes, and coaches. These bits of advice are prescriptions of behavior that you're encouraged to follow to be successful. Once you have a vision, you can invest your energy and time into the most optimal prescriptions. That is, learn from coaches who help people with your specific objectives. Read books that offer practical advice to your particular needs. A vision provides you with a filter to eliminate useless information. You can direct your learning in a way that makes the most out of the overabundance of resources.
4. It Improves Decision-Making
Just as it filters information coming in, a vision allows you to make productive choices about your energy going out—a north star to guide your decisions. This means maximizing the management of your energy and time. Every goal, action, and habit is evaluated based on how it optimizes your life for the desired vision.
5. It Will Teach You About Yourself
Often, there are multiple things we are trying to satisfy with our goals. We're not only trying to get money, abs, or a new job. There are deeper-level things we are striving to obtain that come from our core values. As you refine your vision, you can draw profound insights into these deeper levels. It's important to develop a clear sight of your underlying incentives and value structures. Then fill your life with activities that satisfy them. A vision will lead you to these discoveries.
Conclusion
A life vision is just as crucial for clarifying what not to do as discovering what to do. In a life full of boundless opportunities, abundance becomes the obstacle to quality. It's too easy to spend much of life in shallow experiences, distracted by simple pleasures. A vision provides an antidote to abundance. It constructs boundaries of space to explore that allow you to dig into more fulfilling experiences. Designing a life around what speaks to your fundamental values is vital to enjoying it.
A vision is your tool to do this.