Updated on February 8th, 2019
So you’ve looked at your life so far, and gathered its golden nuggets of wisdom. You’ve painted a picture of who you really are today. Time to look to the future now, and create a vision of the life you want!
That’s not the same as setting goals. It’s more to about finding a beacon to guide you as you move your life forward. There’s many ways to do that. Discover my best 5 – with a brilliant free tool.
Imagine you’re stepping out of your front door, to go somewhere. How do you know whether to turn left or right, or walk straight on, if you don’t know where you’re intending to go? Of course you could just pick left, right or centre at random, start walking, and end up wherever you end up. Which absolutely has its charm, value and use – sometimes.
But if you’re intending to create a life you love, then it’s worth spending a bit of time exploring what that is, before you start walking. Because when you know that, you’ll be able to tell whether it’s turning left, right, or staying central that will take you in that direction.
Let your vision inspire your way forward
Now, you could set yourself some specific, measurable, achievable, realistic and time-bound goals for your life. That’s one way of doing it; it has its place and works for some situations.
But personally, I believe it’s not the best way for transforming your life into a life you love. I prefer to set direction instead of goals – click here to read why.
Your new life vision is not something to race towards, compete with others in, achieve, or tick off. It’s not a foretelling of the future, either.
Rather, it’s your way of setting the direction you want to take in your life. It’s your description of the life you want to live in the near or more distant future. (You decide, of course, how far forward you want to envision your future.)
You can express your vision in practical terms, and write down the elements, people and activities that you want in your future life. Or you can use imagery, metaphor, colour or even feeling, and mood, to describe it. Whichever way:
Make your vision enticing, exciting, desirable, and utterly right for you.
It’s meant to be your inspiration- the shining light that will guide you, and keep you going, as you change your life towards it.
But what if you don’t know what your new life vision is?
There are many ways to tease it out! Below are my 5 best ones to get you started.
And, by the way: What you discovered in Step 1 and Step 2 of this Six-Step-Guide-to-Changing-Your-Life will help you with these.
My 5 best ways to help you find your vision
1 Visualise your future
Click here to download my Life Vision Visualisation
to help you find your new life vision. It’s pleasant, effective, tried-and-tested, and has helped many of my clients. Free. And you’ll receive my free tips and inspiration for living a life you love, too.
2 Tell the big picture story
Let’s forget about details and specifics of the life you love for now. And get an overall, high level view of it instead.
This is how you do it:
- If you were to describe your life so far with one single word, phrase or image, what would that be?
- If you were to describe your life today with one single word, phrase or image, what would that be?
- If you were to describe the life you want in the future with one single word, phrase or image, what would that be?
It’s as if you were telling your life story in the shortest possible way, for example:
“I’ve come from great hardship, I’m now in a more comfortable place, and I want a future life where I thrive, not just survive.”
So, tell me: What’s your big picture story?
3 Project from the past, or the present
This is where your life review will come in useful. Remind yourself of the salient points, then ask yourself:
- Which elements of your present or past are you taking with you into your future?
- What are you going to stop, leave behind, let go?
- What are you going to change – and in what way?
What picture of your future life emerges from your answers?
4 Work from what you value
Remember coming up with the 3 things you most value in life? (If you haven’t done the exercise yet, check out my post Who are you, really? and scroll down to Point 2.)
For each one of them, ask yourself how much you’re able to live it in your current life: Not at all? Somewhat? Totally?
Then ask yourself what a future life would look like, in which you’d totally live according to what you value.
Say, for example, one of the things you most value is freedom, but you’re currently feel a slave to your job. So a future life where you live more according to your value of freedom could be… a life where you work more flexibly? Quit your job and go travelling for a while? Retire? Set up your own business? Whatever it is: There’s your kernel to a new life vision!
5 Build in what you love
Take your list of the 10 things (people, activities) you love most. (If you haven’t done this exercise yet, check out my post Who are you, really? and scroll down to Point 3.)
Rate each of your loves according to how much you live them in your life today – not at all, somewhat, or totally.
If you were to live a life in which each of your loves was present in its right amount – what would it look like?
Perhaps you want to spend less time at work, and more with your loved ones. Or you need more fun and adventure in your life. You’d have a serious hobby, or a passion. Introduce more colour. Learn a new skill. Move closer to a place, or a person you love.
What vision of your future is emerging for you?
Well done – you got started!
Don’t be discouraged if it takes you a while to tease out your new life vision – finding something we don’t know yet can be a somewhat mysterious process.
Want more?
Click here to download my Life Vision Visualisation
to visualise your future. It’s pleasant, effective, tried-and-tested, and has helped many of my clients. Free. And receive my tips and inspiration for living a life you love, too.
And if you find it difficult to explore on your own, then why not
click here to check out my coaching programmes ?
They are designed to give you space, structure and inspiration, as well as guide you as you explore. I will be carefully listening to what you say in our coaching sessions, and help you see and pull together the vision that is right for you.
As one of my clients said:
“Sometimes it takes another person, someone who is unbiased,
to help us see what’s right in front of us!” 🙂
Over to you now
How did you get on with teasing out your vision? What’s emerged for you? Please do share your comments below!
My next post in this series 6 Steps to a Life You Love – My Ultimate How To Guide to Changing Your Life, is Step 4: Create a Rough Roadmap
Want to review the previous step? Hop back to Step 2: Create a Snapshot of Yourself
Want to remind yourself of all 6 steps in sequence? Check out 6 Steps to a Life You Love: My Ultimate How To Guide to Changing Your Life
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