Understanding Your Vision

A vision is a mental image produced by the imagination and it’s usually a long-term view of the future - Tamsen Garrie

What is your Vision?

Having a vision is important for everyone, but none more so than the entrepreneur. We're constantly challenged and encouraged to think big, to dream big. As the above quote suggests, it's something you aspire to be, do and have. It has the nuance of a long-term target or objective.

Having a big vision is great because:

• if you shoot for the moon, you'll reach for the stars
• your limiting beliefs won't make sense in this grand new world
• it helps map a path for your personal and professional development
• a compelling, alluring big vision is one of the most effective strategies for achieving the life of your dreams
• it helps you stay motivated and stokes the fire in the belly
• it helps you overcome obstacles and challenges along the way.

Vision Components

What does a vision encapsulate? A strong clear vision will embrace the expression of your gifts, passions and interests, your core values and your mission in life.

If we aren't clear on any of these, we can't be clear on our vision. So let's take a brief look at some of the core components.

• Your Gifts are what come naturally to you or what you have become very good at. They are definite skillsets or accomplishments as well as strengths of character.
• Your Passions and Interests are often tied to your gifts because quite often what comes naturally to you become your passions or chief interests. So you may find that you repeat your gifts and skills here. However, you may have passions and interests that lie beyond your gifts, that are bigger and bolder. You may still be exploring, developing and honing these.
• Core Values are tangible, observable attributes. They create the map according to which you carry out your work and live your life. They say a lot about you and give you a greater understanding of yourself: why you act or react in a certain way in response to people, events and circumstances. When you don't behave in alignment with your core values, when the behaviour of others around you clashes with your core values, or when a component of your core values is missing from your life, then things feel distantly out of kilter. The feeling that something is wrong will not go away until all around you, including your own behaviour, is once more in alignment with your core values.
• Your mission is essentially your purpose in life. Purpose only has meaning in the context of the Golden Rule, i.e. we are here to serve others and impact others in a positive, beneficial way. Where there is purpose, there is meaning. It's no wonder we feel the most joy when we see others benefit from what we do or contribute. It's never a selfish or vanity act. That's why a vision that focuses solely on having lots of money (with no purpose attached to that money) will rarely provide long-term happiness and fulfilment. In my Empowered to Rise programme, I talk a lot about mission and purpose. Because without this clarity and connection to a higher goal or vision, how can we empower ourselves to rise up from the limitations of our conditioning, our current situation and circumstances? When you have a strong mission, you have a strong desire. And desire is the fuel that propels you forward towards attaining your vision.

The Limitation of Vision Boards and Dream Lists

I'm sure most of us have created vision boards at one point or other in our lives. If you haven't, then I encourage you to do one because they're fun and allow you to explore your purpose, dreams and desires.

If you're looking for a great online vision mapping tool, do check out Brian Mayne's Goal Mapping Tool.

I came late to Vision Boards. I did my first one when I started my training in the Energy Alignment Method in 2017. It was so much fun. We used our kinesthetic sway to find out which magazines and newspapers to look at, which pictures and words to cut out. To this day, I've kept a lot of them, especially the words. It was uncanny, because the same words were being revealed to me: Rise and Rising. At the time, they had little meaning to me, but now in the context of my personal development journey and what I offer, they have real, symbolic meaning. In a subsequent vision board exercise, we even used the sway to map out a timeline of events for our vision. So many of my fellow EAM mentors have been truly amazed at how accurate and true these boards have become.

However, after being in a millionaire training programme for the past 6 months, I've realised that there is something that is even more powerful than doing vision boards or writing a list of 50 or so things to have and experience in your life. This is the Awaken concept. It's about awakening the identity of you as the person in your vision. Who are you in that dream life? Who have you become? How do you see yourself?

This is so important, because it allows you to use the gift of your imagination more powerfully than ever before. Why is that? Because you are placing the main character or actor in your vision. And this character is YOU in all your envisioned glory, significance and relevance. The emotions it evokes are off the scale. And you know of course (if you've been following my previous articles), how important emotion is in terms of your vibrational frequency and the ability to awaken the subconscious mind to navigate you towards the attainment of your vision.

There is no better way to do this than by doing an Awaken magazine cover of the ideal self in your vision. You can create more than one profile. So if you see yourself as a published, successful author as well as a speaker, you can do 2 separate ones. If you see yourself as a successful designer of clothing as well as a style coach, you can do one that covers both or do 2 separate ones.

Below is the very first one I did for myself (when I combined the goals in my big vision of myself) and I brazenly shared it on my Facebook profile. So many people started to congratulate me because it looked a fait-accompli. What does that tell me? It tells me that they see this as a reality for me. So if they can see me as this person, why can't I? It's extremely empowering. When you begin to believe it's possible, your outer world starts to line up in harmony with that vision.

If you'd like to try this out for yourself, here's a Canva template you can use. To accompany this, you could also write a Future Self letter or storybook, which describes a typical day in your new life as this person. Just remember to add descriptive, emotional words to give it depth, poignancy and flavour.

If you'd like to get more clarity around your vision or help with using the template, then please do book in a free call with me. I'd love to help.

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You can also still join my Empowered to Rise programme, where we do lots of EAM (Energy Alignment Method) exercises to release any resistances around your vision. This will allow you to step into flow energy, connect more easily into your intuition and know the exact steps to take to realise your vision.