Is Personal Vision the Key to getting what you really want from life?
Have you ever considered where you should start when it comes to getting what you want in life?
Is Personal Vision the real deal or just self-help BS?
We examine its purpose and test the theory to find out for ourselves.
What is Personal Vision?
We’ve selected this simple definition:-
Your Personal Vision is your mental picture of the life you want to lead. It is a picture of your life in the future.
A Personal Vision is a complete picture of your life including everything that is important to you; this includes things like your finances, health, work, family, friends, recreation and personal growth.
What is the Benefit of Personal Vision – why should you do this?
Many Self-Help Gurus (and some scientific research) suggest that people with a clear Personal Vision are much more likely (than people without vision) to:
- Be happier and more satisfied with their lives
- Experience less depression and anxiety
- Be physically healthier
- Be more focused and less likely to procrastinate
- Spend more time taking action toward their goals
So the benefits are definitely worth taking the process seriously.
How do you create your Personal Vision?
You need to take the time to think long and hard about what you really want for your future and then write it down with as much clarity as possible.
I’ve got to say that the ‘How to’ may sound pretty easy but it can take much longer than you may expect.
To be effective your Personal Vision needs to include who you want to be, what you want to do, how you want to feel, what you want to own, and who you want to associate with.
The key thing is not to get hung-up trying to explore and imagine every corner of your life, just focus on getting the most important things covered. It’s also worth remembering that your Personal Vision will evolve (just like you will), be open to this and feel free to update your vision as and when required.
If you would like some help in creating your own Personal Vision then the following questions will give you a place to start. Before you begin we recommend you spend about 30 minutes alone, preferably in a quiet place to quieten your mind and think clearly.
Once you feel relaxed and clear it is time to think about Your future, that is what you really want from life. During this exercise it is important to let go of any limitations you feel exist and treat it more like a game, let your imagination flow.
- Where would you live?
- What would you do?
- Who would you choose spend time with?
- Who would you be?
- What would you do for fun?
- What were the forgotten dreams of your youth?
These questions should help give you a little push in the right direction, but to keep you from straying too far from your true self you should be able to state why you want the vision you describe. If you can’t provide a reason why then you may be describing something you think you want but deep down it doesn’t really matter.
Who supports and actively promotes the technique?
One of the habits set out in Stephen Covey’s “The 7 habits of highly effective people” promotes the technique with the statement:
Begin with the End In Mind.
Stephen Covey recommends formulating a “personal vision statement” to document one’s perception of one’s own vision in life.
Personal Vision is promoted as a fundamental technique by almost all Self-Help Gurus, in fact a random selection of 3 books from our extensive library resulted in a positive reference to the power of creating your Personal Vision.
There are also a number of methods being promoted to expand on this basic technique, in the last 12 months we have seen Vision Cards, Vision Boards, Mind Movies and Vision Desktop Wallpaper.
I’ve got to admit that my research for those supporting Personal Vision is overwhelming.
What our tests show
We performed some tests based on 4 people all following the same method over a period of 3 years.
The results do support in favor of the power of Personal Vision but not with 100% success.
Interestingly, 3 of the 4 found they did indeed move in the direction of their vision, accomplishing many of the goals they set. They also report feeling happier and more in control of their life then before the experiment began.
Our fourth test subject struggled to describe a vision that was congruent with their true self, it appears they described the life they had been raised to ‘aspire to’ and not the life that they truly believed was for them. This had disastrous consequences for them as they were working harder than ever before doing something they hated to create a life they didn’t really want.
This goes to show that there is more to getting this right than just creating a Personal Vision, the individual must be able to connect with their true self or the vision process may actually guide them into a life they do not want.
How does it work?
Leading brain research shows that the brain is a goal seeking machine, it loves to seek out what it has been programmed to do. To assist in this process the brain’s Reticular Activating System (RAS) becomes activated when given focused instructions and this can help you notice opportunities, people or events that could lead to the desired outcome.
Our evidence suggests that creating a Personal Vision does in fact provide clarity and focus to the brain, thus activating the RAS and then greatly increases the individuals chance to move in the direction of that vision.
I feel it is important to point out that the test subjects did not use Personal Vision alone but combined it with Goal Setting and Action. In my opinion these two approaches are crucial steps in the process to create favorable results. Personal Vision is just the beginning, it is your thoughts that are the seeds to anything you do and your Personal Vision is the clarification of your thoughts, but you then need to do something with it.
Conclusion
The research we found combined with the tests we performed provide conclusive support in favor of creating a Personal Vision. There is no doubt that it forms a key part to getting what you want in life, but it doesn’t provide the complete answer, just the beginning of a process that includes other steps like setting goals, identifying resources and taking action.
If you haven’t yet created your Personal Vision do you know what you are doing and where you are going? Be careful you don’t let someone else dictate where you’ll end up!
I recommend you try our Life Energizer System, it will guide you through the process and help you create your Personal Vision and the Goals required to take you there.
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[...] my last post on Personal Vision I discussed what Personal Vision was and why it was important. Today I’m crossing over to [...]