In my last post Success Planning – 10 Steps to Success I presented you with a list of items, 10 steps to success, that I believe consistently appear in some guise in the models of people who I have studied or have been fortunate enough to have worked with .To remind you here they are again:

10 Steps to Success

  1. Vision – a desired future state, something to set your sights on
  2. Goals – well formed and specific goals, that contribute to the attainment of the vision
  3. Motivation – the driving force to action, the reason why you wish to pursue the goals & vision
  4. Belief – your confidence that you can accomplish your goals, needs to be stronger than any doubts or uncertainties that you may have
  5. Planning – the need to explore options, activities, prioritising and scheduling time
  6. Personal growth – attainment of new skills and knowledge to assist in the accomplishment of your goals
  7. Getting help from others – may come in many forms, for example, key skills, specialist knowledge, support
  8. Execution, Execution, Execution – taking action and actually getting things done
  9. Measure and Review – measure your progress, review the progress against plan and take necessary actions
  10. Celebrate your successes – enjoy your successes, your wins. Build confidence

In this post I am going to look at the first of the Success Steps that I have listed, that is Vision

Vision

As is my way, I’d like to offer you a dictionary definition of Vision which is as follows:

… a pleasing imaginative plan for, or anticipation of, future events (noun)
…To see as a vision, to imagine (transitive verb)
The Chambers Dictionary (11th Edition)

I think this captures the essence of what I understand to be the purpose of vision in success planning, that being to imagine and develop a set of scenarios for your desired future. In business a vision is developed to communicate the desired future state of an organisation and is used to inspire, focus the attention of and harness the energy of the employees. In the same vein, a vision should serve to inspire, focus your attention and provide the energy to drive YOU PLC towards your desired future. The stronger that you can make the sensory description of your vision and create that imagery, what you would see, hear, touch, smell etc, the more compelling and ‘real’ it will appear to you; you know how a vivid dream does, it is like you are actually there. That in turn will motivate you and pull you towards it.

By it’s very nature, your vision will be unique to you. What you want to achieve, what you want to experience and your desired future are yours to explore. As you explore it write things down, be descriptive, find pictures/sounds/scents that will act as cues; all of these things serve to embed and reinforce the vision in your mind. That’s a topic for another day… As a Coach, this is an area that I find really rewarding when I work with people to develop their vision

I personally like to mind-map, sketch and find pictures to build up ideas and cues, that is my preference as a ‘visual’ thinker. From there I start to develop and refine goals and that is the subject for my next post…

Through Her Eyes, Vision, Success
Creative Commons License photo credit: las (used to be meeza 1)