To live your life on purpose, you need to know WHERE YOU ARE GOING.
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Read on to learn WHY vision setting is a necessary step at living your life ON PURPOSE . . . . .
I am often asked how to live ‘life on purpose’ and one of my first recommendations to anyone who asks, and a first step I take with all my life coaching client, is to have them determine what they want their life to be?
Most of us have this vague sense of the life we want. It probably includes certain people, certain places, certain living arrangements. But these grander ideas often lack detail and the deeper connection to what our heart craves.
Setting a vision for your life will CHANGE IT. I have experienced this, I’ve seen it happen, motivation speakers preach it, science and art seem to agree in support of it. But you will need to experience it yourself to know.
Here is WHY it will change your life:
1. You are finally listening.
So many of us (*cough moms!*) just cruise through the day putting out fires, settling sibling disputes, trying to catch a minute alone on insta, cooking food our kids whine about. I am raising my hand along with all the women who feel like they have lived for years just on auto-pilot, not really knowing what you wanted but knowing it probably didn’t look like this.
For so many years we have stopped listening to who we are, what we want, and how we want to show up. Or if we do listen, we have a list of excuses about why our heart is wrong and that its desires are unreasonable. The less that we listen, the end result is that we are losing the connection and trust with our own heart. Like a neglected lover, eventually, it will roll over and fall asleep.
You are made with unique interests and dreams and skills and creative vision that NOBODY ELSE has! Only you! The process of setting your life vision is that it will cause you to STOP, to be still, and to listen closer.
This process will reconnect you with yourself and start rebuilding the trust you have in your own heart and the trust it has in you to follow through.
2. You are getting clarity
In the Life on Purpose workbook, the vision-setting process takes up the bulk of the book. This is because it has too – you need to dig deeper into these things and get really clear on exactly what you want. Because clarity on the destination allows clarity on the path to get there.
You can’t just have a general vision like “I want to be healthy and happy “. What does that even look like? How do you make that happen? Odds are you just putting that wish out there and ‘hoping’ it all happens. This isn’t living on purpose, this is living on autopilot.
It goes back to listening to your heart – what does “healthy and happy” mean TO YOU? How can you get really clear on that?
Setting a vision for the different areas of your life will give you space to start putting shape and circumstance and detail around WHAT you want so that you can make more sense out of HOW to get it.
3. You are using the power of visualization
When you stop and think about the life you want you are listening closer to yourself AND you are actively visualizing what could be. You can see what it looks like, imagine where items are, envision what it feels like, smells like, tastes like.
And something incredible is actually happening in your brain.
The act of visualizing an experience, thinking about how it feels and smells, getting really detailed on it is actually allowing your brain to make new connections and pathways because your brain treats this mental practice as actual physical action.
Science has shown that, to your brain, it is laying the groundwork as if this has already happened. There are many studies showing groups that visualize themselves accomplishing something makes them more successful in achieving the goal they visualized. There are even studies that show people who imagine they are weight lifting are activating the same parts of their brain as those who actually do the physical weight lifting.
Your brain is going from its autopilot way of thinking to create NEW thought patterns. These thought patterns will allow you to be much more successful at accomplishing your vision because over half the battle is mindset!
4. You have a vision that allows more empowered goals
When I have the goal to declutter my bedroom, I will likely put it off. It is just another chore and I can close the door and ignore the mess. BUT when I have a vision for how I want to use my bedroom, how I want it to look, how I want to feel in it – then I am motivated to declutter the bedroom because it SUPPORTS my vision.
You can try and set goals without a vision, but odds are that you will lose steam, feel uninvested, or get to the end and wonder why you still feel restless and unhappy with this area of your life.
Set your vision and then set the goals that support that vision.
Setting the vision for your life
There are lots of ways you can dig into setting a vision for your life. I don’t think it matters which avenue you go, as long as you INVEST the time doing it.
Here are some ways I offer to help you with this process:
The Life on Purpose workbook – it is that DEEP DIVE into exploring the vision you have for the nine areas of your life and working through goals that will support that vision.
The LIVE YOUR VISION worksheets (sign up below) – these are new, I just made them. I wanted to take the theme of the workbook and condense it into a simple exercise for those who want to get STARTED with listening closer to themselves and the vision they want for their life.
Life Coaching – setting life vision is the first step we take in my life coaching program – from there we pick an area of life to start with and we work through limiting mindsets, blind spots, goal setting and action.
