“The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision” – Helen Keller
Why you need to have a vision for yourself
Technically speaking, vision is the ability to physically see or have sight, but I am not speaking about that type of vision. I am referring to the vision that you need to have for your life, career, business, health, relationships, etc.
What is the vision that you have for yourself when it comes to these things? Before you ask yourself if this blog is supposed to be about money, yes it is, but money has a lot to do with the vision that you create for yourself. It becomes the output or number that you need to know in order to achieve what you want for yourself.
As was mentioned in the previous blog, we talked about why it is important for you to create and have a vision for yourself. The main reason is to understand and remember your why. There will be times in life when things will get rough, and you will need something to remind you why you are even doing any of this. Having a defined “why” for yourself helps to do this for you.
Whether you are a numbers person or not, when you have documented your vision in either a vision board, journal or plan, it becomes a powerful guide for knowing where your numbers need to be!
How to create a vision for yourself
Creating a vision is not just about the physical and tangible things that you want. Your vision should also define the experience of how you want to show up and give in your relationships. It defines how you want to feel and who your character will be.
Building and maintaining relationships based on how you want to show up in this world is very important to you. It very easy to get caught up in the busy tides of life, and get lost and consumed with performing busy tasks. It’s also common for us to become so distracted with the latest and greatest happening around you or with others in your life.
And let’s not even mention social media, FOMO (fear of missing out) overload! It can make you feel “less than” in so many areas of your life!. Knowing what your vision is and checking in with it on a regular basis will help to alleviate the comparison trap. Besides, you have time to get caught up living a life that you don’t want and can’t afford!
What your vision should include
When creating a vision for yourself the following categories are the most commonly used:
- Relationship
- Spiritual
- Health
- Family
- Finances
- Mental
- Lifestyle
- Career/Business
Taking the time to actually define what you need and want from these categories really provides clarity. It makes you feel like you have something to work towards even if you don’t have all the answers for how you are going to do it. The goal here isn’t for you to build everything from a comfort perspective. Your vision needs to have things that seem impossible and actually scary for you to accomplish.
Also, when you take the time to break it down further you start to see how close you are towards actually achieving what you want. In the end, you will feel empowered and have the end result that you want to achieve as opposed to wandering without aim and purpose.
Creating a Vision Board
We’ve all heard about vision boards, I love vision boards! They’re amazing for motivating and reminding you about your dreams. When you a visual representation of your dreams to look at it every day, it will help you to become very focused. I highly recommend that you create one for yourself!
What you need to consider
If you tell me that spending a lot of time with your family is very important to you, but you are working 80 hours a week in your business or a job, I would tell you that you are not making that a priority! In fact, your actions will create a lot of conflict for yourself because what you are saying and doing are not aligned. When your words and actions do not align, it causes issues for how you treat yourself and how others treat you. In essence, it destroys trust. This is a common reason that causes your finances to be off track.
I understand that businesses all have seasons, like needing to work very long hours because of demand. We still need to be conscious of the choices that we are making with our time and money. We must not allow our money to master us, we must master our money!
I am not saying to never work 80 hour weeks, let’s be real here sometimes that just what needs to happen for a period of time. It just can’t be your normal if you are someone who wants to have meaningful relationships with family and friends. If we allow money to master us we lose our way with our vision. The money starts to dictate what we do as opposed to us the determining what we do with our money. This is why it’s so important that you create a vision for your life that will dictate everything else for your finances.
Putting it all together
There are several ways that you can go about actually creating a vision for yourself. As I mentioned earlier the most common outputs are vision boards and vision journals. Using the categories that are listed above, you can create visuals and words that are important to you to refer back to.
You can also approach it from looking at what you want your ideal day or week to look like. When using this approach, it isn’t from a scheduling perspective, but from the aspect of what you want to have the freedom to do on any given day or specific days of the week. This may help you to conceptualize your vision a lot easier. For example, you may not want to work on Mondays, so what do you want to do with that time off? Do you want to have it dedicated to you only, or with loved ones, or to pursue some passion projects? The choice is yours!
You may also need some additional help with actually determining what it is that you want for your vision. Here are some resources that you can refer to help you create the vision for yourself:
Danielle Laporte
I have personally used both the resources listed below to help me create my vision for myself. Danielle Laporte material is great at asking the right questions to help you know what your core desired feelings are. It also provides you with strategies for setting goals for yourself that you can be actually excited and proud to do:
- Fire Starter Session Audio Course (FREE): http://www.daniellelaporte.com/free-audio-course/
- The Desire Map: http://www.daniellelaporte.com/thedesiremap/
Tiffany Lanier
Tiffany has created a really informative a quick video on how to create a vision board effectively. Check it out here: https://youtu.be/vPVf9zMM62c
Creating a vision board in Canva
For those of you who do not know what Canva is, let me start off by saying you are in for a treat! Canva gives you the ability to create awesome digital graphics without needing to have a graphic artist background. I stumbled upon a great resource from Nicholette Styles over at the Think Creative Collective. She has free vision board template to use in Canva. Check it out here: http://thinkcreativecollective.com/blog/2016/12/21/how-to-create-your-vision-board-in-canva
Don’t forget to actually complete your vision board/journal exercise, and actually look at your visual representation every day! It’s important for you to be in tune with the vision so can remember why you are getting out of your bed every day and doing what you are doing.
Stay tuned to the next blog post in the Getting Right with Your Money Series, where we will dive into know how to determine where you currently stand with your finances.
