We don’t know where you are in your life. Perhaps life is great and you’re on the path to reach your goals (if so, we salute you!), but you could also be in a giant hole with troubles all around you, or somewhere in between. Regardless of where you are, though, it’s vitally important that you have a positive vision for your life.
Having a positive vision for your life does two things: it gives you something positive to chase and something negative to run away from. And whether you’re in the best or worst place you’ve ever been, it helps you move forward.
It’s also more than setting a goal; it’s more complete than that. A goal is something like wanting to run a half marathon, shaving a few strokes off your handicap or getting your business to hit a particular target. And don’t get us wrong; goals are important, but we’re after something higher than that.
A positive vision can be thought of as the governing vision that you group or orientate your goals around. In a sense, it gives your goals and aims purpose and meaning. You could call it a master goal, if you want. And it’s important because it will help you find the depths of inner strength you need when times are tough and motivation is low, as well as give you continuing meaning when you reach a goal or milestone.
Think about it. Why do you want to grow your business? What’s behind that goal? Or why have you made it a goal to lift a certain weight and run a certain distance? Because you want to be fit, sure. But why? Why do you want to get fit and strong?
Individual and arbitrary goals are good and give you a sense of purpose – at least in the short term – but much better than that is figuring out why you’re really aiming at the things you’re aiming at and how they get you to where you really want to be.
All that is well and good, but how does one go about casting a positive vision?
One way, as Jordan Peterson once put it, is to spend some time writing down what you really want in life and what you need to do to get there, and then spend some time writing down what the absolute worst your life could get if you indulged all the worst parts of your character. Once you’ve done that, you can sort through what you’re actually doing on the daily, as well as what your goals are.
You’ll very quickly realise which of your habits and goals are taking you towards where you want to go, and which of them are taking you nowhere or to the bad place.
The beauty of this approach is that it gives you the larger orientating vision that provides you motivation to keep pushing towards your goals, as well as inciting a healthy apprehension of negative hopes and goals that will take you away from your true best interests.
However, there’s also something more to this. When you have a positive vision for your life, you are actively – proactively, even – working towards building something. That’s an inherently positive pursuit and it keeps you focussed on the positive. And in a world in which so many spend their lives complaining and focussing on the negative, being focussed on building towards the positive is something that will make you stand out.
That’s not to say you’ll be blindly optimistic. Quite the contrary. You’ll be someone who is rooted in reality, but without the cynicism and negativity that sucks the oxygen out of the room.
And what’s more, when you cross off a smaller goal, there will be none of the emptiness that sometimes creeps in after reaching a goal. Instead, there will be the satisfaction that comes from the knowledge that you’re still heading in the right direction.
So that’s our challenge for you. Start creating a positive vision for your life. Take the time to think about what really matters to you and to jot down what the best possible life could look like (with reasons why you want it). Then take some time to orient your goals around that vision.
Once that’s done, it’s time to start building.
But one last word for those of you who are in a particularly rough situation. Although it doesn’t feel like it, one of the best things you can do for yourself is to set a vision of what you want your life to look like (and you don’t have to be modest about it). Simply by doing that and identifying what needs to happen for you to move towards your vision, you have the bare bones of a plan, and if you have a plan, you have a possible pathway out of your situation.
And that brings on a ray of hope that starts to light up the darkness that surrounds you.
