Personal Development;Life Enhancement;Achievement
Posts tagged business vision
Your Vision of the Future Part Nine
Jan 30th
“Talk doesn’t cook rice.” ~Chinese Proverb
Now that you have a great motivating vision for the coming year, it is time to write your longer term vision – a vision that talks about what you life is going to be about for the next five to fifty years. It was important to get the smaller vision, the one year vision, down on paper and learn the process before beginning the bigger vision.
Remember all of those goals that you wrote down that talked about things more than one year in the future? Keep this list, I would recommend forever, and use it to create a vision for the next ten years. Ten years is a great length of time to consider for your next vision. Here you can dream the really big dreams – and have the time to make them happen. Most people, myself included, will tend to overestimate what they can accomplish in one year and massively underestimate what they can accomplish in a decade. In ten years, you can do almost anything that you desire. Your homework for this – build a ten year vision. Go through the exact same steps that I showed you for a one year vision. There is tremendous power in a one year vision combined with a ten year vision and I think you deserve to have this energy at your command.
Creating a Shared Vision with Partners or a Team:
How do you create a shared vision with a life or business partner or a team of individuals? You do it the same basic way that you created your personal vision – by starting with unlimited dreaming and working down to the five most important goals for the coming year. This is a wonderful exercise to do with your team or your life or business partner. In my many years of consulting and coaching, it is extremely rare that I see this actually done and that is a shame. Yes, it takes time – a significant amount of time if more than a few individuals are involved. But you get so much for the invested time!
- You find out what others really want and incorporate these things when possible
- You get rid of hidden agendas that can waste so much time
- You end up with everyone working towards the same goals and knowing why
- You end up with a highly and personally motivated team
- You handle problems, concerns and mixed goals upfront – before you waste lots of time and money
- You get more ideas – more feedback – more information that can make the vision even more powerful
Action. Ultimately, you create a vision to help you take action. Without action nothing happens. Without a vision to guide and power that action, you waste time and money taking the wrong actions.
I hope you enjoyed this mini-series on creating a vision and I hope you use it. I will end this series of articles with a question that I asked myself years ago and it is still motivating: “Haven’t Your Dreams Waited Long Enough?”
Till next time…Jack
“We cannot do everything at once, but we can do something at once.” ~Calvin Coolidge
Your Vision of the Future Part Eight
Jan 29th
“A successful person is one who can lay a firm foundation with the bricks that others throw at him or her.” ~David Brinkley
Did you get a chance to read through my personal vision for this next year? If not, take a few minutes and read it over; you will find it as part of yesterday’s entry. I want to point out a few of the special features of my vision statement for the coming year that you might consider incorporating into yours.
- Everything in my vision assumes that I have already been successful. I mentally want to be in the place where I expect to succeed. Sure, something could happen that prevents me from achieving one or more of my goals, but every day, as I read my vision, I am going to put myself in the mental frame of mind that I succeeded – that I found a way and made it happen.
- I talk in my vision about how it feels when I have made my goal into my reality. I talk about how great it feels to have achieved this. I am creating an anchor of feeling great that I am attaching to thinking about each of my goals and to taking action on each of my goals. More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Seven
Jan 28th
“Vision is the art of seeing the invisible.” ~Jonathan Swift
I thought I would share my personal vision today for the next twelve months. Seeing my example, built from my top five goals might be useful.
Here again are my top five goals for the next twelve months:
- Health: I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009.
- Family: My wife and I will take our family to New York for a great vacation to celebrate my elder daughter’s completion of her graduate program.
- Business: I will blog 5 days per week – every week of 2009.
- Finances: I will earn more in 2009 than I ever have before – at least 25% more.
- Fun: I will run in the USA’s largest cross-country race: The Living History Farms Seven Miler.
Here is the vision that I built from those goals:
It is the morning of December 31st and I have had a marvelous year. I feel More >
Your Vision of the Future Part Six
Jan 27th
vision: noun – the ability to see or a vivid mental image produced by the imagination or great perception of future developments
So, how did it go creating your vision of the future based on your top five goals for the next twelve months? Do you get excited when you read your vision? Does it feel great when you imagine yourself in the vision – in the time when these five goals are now your reality? If it doesn’t then go rewrite your vision until you absolutely love how it sounds and feels and you can’t wait to make it happen.
Now, here is your first assignment with your vision – tape record it on to a small portable recorder. If you don’t have a small digital recorder, then go get one. They are a marvelous tool for personal development. Once you have your vision tape recorded then I want you to start to listen to it at least twice per day. Listen to it first thing in the morning. Listen to it just before you go to bed a night. Each time that you listen to your vision, make it even more real for yourself – really be there. You will almost certainly find that you can enhance your vision quite a bit a first; you will be able to add details that make it even more compelling. This is a very good thing. A compelling vision makes it easy to take the necessary action to make that vision become real.
In the next entry, I will talk a bit about using your newly created vision to stay motivated and on track for achieving your goals. Later in this series I will talk about creating visions with business partners and also problems that I commonly see with visions. I also want to give you a sample of my vision – my vision for the next twelve months and my vision for the next ten years.
Till next time…Jack
“I’m not afraid of storms, for I’m learning how to sail my ship.” ~Louisa May Alcott
Your Vision of the Future Part Five
Jan 23rd
“If you can find a path with no obstacles, it probably doesn’t lead anywhere.” ~Frank A. Clark
How did you do with selecting your five most important goals for the coming year? I know that this was challenging for some of you – it was very challenging for me the first time I did this exercise. Remember, you are not giving up on your other goals for the year – you are committing to five goals that you will absolutely focus on achieving and the process of doing that will help many if not all of your other goals to happen along the way.
So, I am going to assume that you have selected five goals for the coming year. We are going to be using these to create a vision for what your life will be like in twelve months – once you have manifested these goals in your life. Here is your assignment and it does not need to be done perfectly, it just needs to be done: Write a story, your own life story, for a time twelve months from now. You have successfully achieved your five most important goals. Talk about what you feel like with these goals achieved. Talk about what having these goals manifested in your life allows you to do. Talk about the positive effects in your life from these goals now being done. Talk about whatever motivates you; especially talk about how great it feels to you and how great it feels for the significant others in your life to see you and experience you with these goals completed.
Have fun with this. We will fine-tune it next time and talk about how to use this vision.
Till next time…Jack
“Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave.” ~Rainer Maria Rilke
Your Vision of the Future Part Four
Jan 22nd
“Life is what we make it, always has been, always will be.” ~Grandma Moses
Did you balance out your goals so that you have a nice mix of short, medium and long-term things written down? Great! Now here is your next task: I want you to go thru all of your goals for the next twelve months and choose five of them to focus on. Choose the five most exciting and compelling and empowering goals. Many of my seminar attendees have a problem making this decision at first. “But I want all of my goals!” – I hear this all of the time. And I understand! I want you to have all of your goals, but you cannot focus on all of them at one time and be successful. It just doesn’t work.
What you can do is choose the five goals, spread across the categories of your life, that by accomplishing in the next year, you will almost as a side effect accomplish your other goals. I call these goals the drivers. As an example, here is a recap of my Top Five Commitments for 2009:
- Health: I will return to my optimal bodyweight before the end of 2009
- Family: My wife and I will take our family to New York for a great vacation to celebrate my elder daughter’s completion of her graduate program
- Business: I will blog 5 days per week – every week of 2009
- Finances: I will earn more in 2009 than I ever have before – at least 25% more
- Fun: I will run in the USA’s largest cross-country race: The Living History Farms Seven Miler.
Are these all of my goals for 2009? Not even close! But by focusing on these, by putting my concentration here, I can virtually guarantee that I will succeed in manifesting these goals and along the way, most if not all of my other goals for 2009 will also happen.
So, go ahead, choose your “Top Five” for 2009. Make sure that they are not all in one category and make sure that they are exciting. If they aren’t exciting, then rewrite them until they are. Next time we will take these goals and put them into a workable vision – something that you can use and enjoy and benefit from every day.
Till next time…Jack
“My life has a superb cast but I can’t figure out the plot.” ~Ashleigh Brilliant
Your Vision of the Future Part Three
Jan 21st
“Let us so live that when we come to die even the undertaker will be sorry.” ~Mark Twain
How did you do with the inventory of your dreams? Was it fun to write them down? How were the timelines? Did you find that most of your goals were many years away? If so, then go back now and add some shorter term goals – goals that you can create in the next year or two. Perhaps you found that most of your goals were things that you intended to complete in the near future – in this case go back and add some long term goals. These long term goals are in some ways your mission – what you are really here to accomplish in your lifetime.
That is all that you need to do today – just go and make sure that you a good mix of short term goals (things that you intend to accomplish in the next year or so), medium term goals (three to five years for completion) and finally long term goals (five years to twenty years or more). One last comment, if you aren’t excited by your goals, go back and rewrite them. Your goals should excite you when you read them. If they aren’t exciting, then you are not being honest with yourself about what you really want.
Till next time…Jack
“What work I have done I have done because it has been play. If it had been work I shouldn’t have done it. Who was it who said, “Blessed is the man who has found his work”? Whoever it was he had the right idea in his mind. Mark you, he says his work–not somebody else’s work. The work that is really a man’s own work is play and not work at all. Cursed is the man who has found some other man’s work and cannot lose it. When we talk about the great workers of the world we really mean the great players of the world. The fellows who groan and sweat under the weary load of toil that they bear never can hope to do anything great. How can they when their souls are in a ferment of revolt against the employment of their hands and brains? The product of slavery, intellectual or physical, can never be great.” ~Mark Twain
Your Vision of the Future Part Two
Jan 15th
“Life is a ticket to the greatest show on earth.” ~Martin H. Fischer
Hey. Did you answer the question from the last entry? Let me repeat it: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt to become or achieve or do, if you knew that it was impossible to fail? How did you do with that question? For me, I can still remember the first time that I heard this question, more than 20 years ago now, and how frightened I was by it. Yes, frightened.
It was frightening to me to put down on paper what I really wanted – the secret dreams of my heart, without knowing how I would accomplish them. Somehow it was safer if I kept these dreams locked up in my mind without even a piece of paper to incriminate me. Funny reaction I know, but some of you might also be finding some resistance to this question. The question does not ask you to formulate a plan, or be logical, or be reasonable – all of those things come later. What it does is presuppose that you will find a way and that the best way to proceed is to come from a place of certainty: I don’t know how I am going to get there, but I know that I will.
So, what was your answer? Write it down and let’s move on to the next question. Actually, before that, let’s do the “priming” that I had mentioned in the last entry. I have written about this before and any of you that have attended one of my live seminars have experienced priming first hand. As a recap, priming is a very powerful technique designed to help you to enter optimal, peak states. I’m not going to go over how it works today. Just follow these instructions – read these words:
Destiny Destined for Greatness Explorer Achievement Powerful Self Confident Successful Unstoppable Grateful Deeply Fulfilled Excited Adventure Satisfaction Playful Delight Ready to learn Fun Ready for new experiences Dreams Heart’s Desire Marvelous Gifts What Matters Most to Me What I truly want My Dreams My Passions My Loves
Great. Now let’s move on to question two. Question 2) Let’s create an inventory of your dreams. I want you to pretend that it is Christmas Eve and you have been very good indeed – Santa is going to bring you whatever you wish. This should be a comprehensive list that looks from today all the way forward to 20 or more years from now. I don’t want you to worry at all about how you will accomplish any of these goals. I don’t want you to put any limits on these goals. I just want you to dream, across all categories of your life, and write these things down.
I’ll give you some categories to help your creativity. Try to end up with at least a dozen notes in each of the following categories of goals. Spend anywhere from a minimum of 5 minutes to whatever amount of time feels right to you.
Goal Setting Categories:
- Your Physical Body Goals
- Personal Development Goals
- Family Goals
- Relationship Goals
- Business Goals
- Spiritual Goals
- Financial Goals
- Fun / Delight Goals
- Possessions
- Emotional Goals
Have fun! It is impossible to do this wrong and we will debrief the results next time.
Jack
“Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I am with you kid. Let’s go.”" ~Maya Angelou
Your Vision of the Future Part One
Jan 14th
Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men. ~Goethe
What a great quote! “Dream no small dreams… How about you? Do you have a clear, compelling vision of your future? A vision so exciting that it powers you through the needed work; a vision so powerful that you will pay the price, in self discipline and action to make it happen? If you are like most of my clients, you have a vision of what life will be like once you win the lottery or what life will be like in some distant future time when you somehow end up with all of your dreams having come true. What very few of my clients have initially, I would say less than 5% of them when we start working together, is a compelling vision of what it will be like just 12 months later – if they achieve their five most important goals.
This is unfortunate. This 12 month vision is critical; without it most people never take the yearly actions that will ultimately make their long-term visions real. So how do you start to create a vision for your future – for the next 12 months? You dream. You dream long-term and short-term. You dream without limits. You dare to put down on paper your most treasured desires – without worrying about how you will achieve them (at least at first).
I was trying to decide how best to give you this material and I will proceed this way: I am going to give you one question or series of questions dealing with the same topic, each entry. You can proceed at your own pace and over the course of a few days, you will have a more powerful plan to create the future of your dreams than 95% of the people out there and you will have the powerful vision that you need to make it happen.
For today, I will just ask you this question to get you going: What would you attempt to do if you knew you could not fail? What would you attempt to become or achieve or do, if you knew that it was impossible to fail? This isn’t my original question – it comes from one of my early mentors: Tony Robbins.
We are also going to do just a bit of priming in the next entry. Priming is a very powerful technique to put yourself in optimal, peak states. You don’t want to miss that either. For now, just answer the question: If you couldn’t fail, what would you do?
Till next time…Jack
“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.” ~Mark Twain