Happiness - Day Three - A Vision

This post is part of a multi-day series on fostering happiness in your life.

Our Vision

“You can have anything you want if you want it desperately enough. You must want it with an exuberance that erupts through the skin and joins the energy that created the world.”
– Sheila Graham

Many of you recently developed a vision for your business. But do you have a vision for your life? Jack Canfield in The Success Principles (my #1 favorite business book) calls this a
"Life Purpose". What are you moving toward? When you close your eyes and picture yourself and your life five or ten years from now, what does it look like?

Someone once said: “If you don’t know where you’re going any road will get your there.”

Vision is a powerful, motivating force. It’s our true north; it gives meaning to our life. If we’re clear on our vision, we can make wise choices on how to spend our time and energy, our most precious resources. We can organize our life so we keep moving toward our vision. There’s a joy in knowing that we have a direction and a larger purpose.

Are there dreams that you’re dreaming but not enacting? Sometimes we park our passions on a shelf, or in a closet, or on a mountaintop where they’re lofty and inaccessible. But we need to bring them down to earth. What do we really hunger for? What are you truly longing?

If we take the time to create our vision, it means that we’re honoring our aspirations, that we haven’t hidden our dreams away and that we aspire to realize our full potential.

If you don’t think you have a dream, if you don’t think you feel passionate about anything, think of the concept of “flow”. When are you absolutely engaged? When does time stand still for you? When do you find you’re doing exactly what you want to be doing and you never want it to end? Is it when you’re painting, when you’re out in the wilderness, when you’re teaching someone to read, when you’re at a protest rally, when you’re organizing your office? What makes you feel a sense of deep happiness, like you’ve come home to yourself?

My huge passion in life was (is) soap. I was fascinated with soap. If I ever went into a store, I immediately made a beeline for the soap. All I saw was soap! So, I've become a professional and full time soapmaker. My entire life revolves around soap - talking about it, making it, talking to people about it, encouraging others to make it. Looking back, it wasn’t an easy path for me; there were obstacles along the way, but I had a vision and didn’t let it go.

When you discover your mission, you will feel its demand. It will fill you with enthusiasm and a burning desire to get to work on it.
W. Clement Stone

If you followed the goal-setting exercises in January, you'll have a Vision for your business that can be easily tweaked to fit your personal life goals. If you've done a Vision Board, you've also got a great head start on this. If you don't have your personal vision written, there are a few ways to go about it. One is talked about by Jack Canfield in his book "The Success Principles." It goes like this:

1. List two of your unique personal qualities, such as enthusiasm and creativity.

2. List one or two ways you enjoy expressing those qualities when interacting with others, such as to support and to inspire

3. Assume the world is perfect right now. What does this world look like? How is everyone interacting with everyone else? What does it feel like? Write your answer as a statement, in the present tense, describing the ultimate condition, the perfect world as you see it and feel it. Example: Everyone is freely expressing their own unique talents. Everyone loves their jobs. Everyone feels joy daily.

4. Combine the three prior subdivisions of this paragraph into a single statement. Example: My purpose is to use my creativity and enthusiasm to support and inspire others to freely express their talents in a harmonious and loving way. Or: If the world was perfect, everyone would love what they did for a job and feel joy every day. From this feeling of satisfaction, a deep well of peace would spread throughout the nation and the world.

So, a vision statement for me might be: I use my forward-thinking positivity and drive to teach and education everyone to how they can find joy every day.

If you don't already have one, make a vision statement for your life. Everything will flow from your bigger picture that you create with this vision statement.

"The major reason for setting a goal is for what it makes of you to accomplish it. What it makes of you will always be the far greater value than what you get."
Jim Rohn