After completing this exercise, you should have a statement of 2-3 sentences that feels super inspiring—it should make you want to take action on your goals! You can act from this new place of confidence and literally start feeling this powerful mission statement working in your life right now. I love this tweak on the act “as if “ advice I have heard in the past because you aren’t “acting” you are tapping into who you really are!! I just love that! Now that you have this document as your personal blueprint, you will begin to attract success effortlessly.
If you feel a bit blasé about your statement, then you may want to check out my free, hour-long teleclass for more support. Or, if you prefer working one on one, consider signing up for a personal coaching session with me. Together, we can get you crystal clear on not only your mission but also your vision and values.
Feel free to leave a comment below regarding any insights or suggestions that you have after completing your personal mission statement.
How to Create a Vision Statement
Many of my clients meet with me and almost instantly identify things in their lives that they’d like to change. They’ll say things like, “I’m sick of being overweight,” “I’m tired of arguing with my spouse,” “I hate my job,” or “My house is filled with clutter!” Feeling unhappy about certain aspects of your life is easy, but what’s often much harder for us is imagining what we’d actually like our lives to look like.
Building a happy, healthy, and successful life isn’t so much about knowing what you hate as it is about recognizing who you want to be. What you want to do with your time? What impact do you want to have on the world? Imagine you are old and looking back on a life well lived—what would this life look like?
Military spouses are already making significant contributions by supporting their service member partners and maintaining the home front, but many haven’t recognized their life visions beyond this pivotal role. By writing a vision statement, a statement of who you want to be, you can really empower yourself as you begin making strides toward improving your health, relationships, work life, and home environment.
While I have discussed vision statements previously, this article will get into the nitty gritty details of how to get your vision statement on paper. This task can be a huge step toward identifying seasonal and longer-term goals.
Imagine Your Ideal Self
When I’ve worked with organizations to develop their vision statements, these businesses tend to conceive of the concept as the way in which the organization will function once its strategic plan has been effectively implemented. If everyone was working at their best, they ask themselves, what would their business look like?
I like to have my clients think about their own visions in the same manner. It’s not just about dreaming of things like designer handbags (although that is totally allowed). It’s also about imagining who you want to become.
So, if you do include a fancy purse in your vision, ask yourself, “what type of person would have this kind of bag?” This analysis will help you take the actions necessary to attract the bag into your life, while leading you closer to your ideal self along the way. A vision is a vivid description of where you want to be ten, five, or even one year from now. The more in-depth the vision, the better!
Look At Your Vision or Create A Seasonal Goal Setting Board
I love spending time with clients and helping them come up with visions because this task forces them to be purposeful about the direction in which their lives are heading. I explain that they can imagine their ideal lifestyles without having to know all the particulars, although a vivid imagination is always helpful! Or write those seasonal health, wealth, and relationship goals on a bulletin board or white board and look at them often. Its not about judging how far you have come (just being a military spouse is GOAL ACCOMPLISHED!) but a friendly reminder that you are making daily decisions that will be in alignment with goals you are attracting in the future. I encourage all of my private clients to make this process graceful, NOT add things to their military lifestyle to do lists. I am a fan of baby steps towards your life vision and invite you to let me be a part of your journey. I love being a cheerleader for your goals and the coaching process is like a mirror so you can see your current self and decide where to go next; I love the process.
Of course, military spouses can’t always decide where they live and they can’t always have their first choices when it comes to employment. But they can dream about their ideal relationships, their health goals, and a meaningful life path beyond their military spouse identities.
Every day I help military spouses find ways to transform their dreams into plans. I have each client start out by creating a vision board: a visual board decorated with images depicting items, people, and ideas related to the people they’d like to become. Even before we talk about finding ideal work and the type of environment in which they will thrive, we just start by imagining these details.
Once my clients have clarified the things they want to attract into their lives by creating vision boards, they are much more likely to take daily action steps toward identifying and accomplishing their goals.
From Vision Board to Vision Statement
Once you’re content that your vision board displays the future you’d like to inhabit, take a few moments to really consider the details. Close your eyes and try to imagine an ideal day in this future. Try to imagine what this future would look, feel, smell, taste, and sound like. Then, write a vision statement based on these images, summarizing the people, things, and concepts that you’d like to bring into your life.
Once you’re done, I suggest taking a photo of your vision boards and vision statements before putting them somewhere highly visible to give yourself a daily reminder of your goals. This affirmation prompts you to make healthy eating choices, focus more on family, and keep working hard.
Let Your Values Guide You Towards Success
Unlike your mission statement or vision statement, a values statement focuses on clarifying your priorities and beliefs. This piece of writing will help you determine the aspects of your life that are most important to you, so that you can prioritize them accordingly as you plan for the future.
While it may be difficult to come up with goals for literally every aspect of your life, this values statement will ensure that you make seasonal and long-term goals for the areas most important to you.
Discover What Matters Most to You
Start your values statement by writing down your top four values, the core principles that guide your decisions in life. Clarifying these ideas can be a great way to help you focus on your most essential personal and professional goals, while also helping to facilitate the decision-making process.
For example, one of my clients listed her top goals as involving achievement, creativity, influencing others, and freedom. So, if she one day gets a call asking her to volunteer at her kids’ school and another asking her to teach a creative writing workshop, she can turn to her values statement to clarify which use of her free time is most important in terms of staying aligned with her priorities.
This client will be able to look at her list and consider how these two opportunities align with her stated goals. She might see the teaching opportunity as offering her an opportunity for achieving more, expressing her creativity, and influencing others, while inhibiting her freedom slightly. In contrast, the volunteership may be an opportunity to get creative and influence others, while offering the same restriction on her freedom. Thus, she may decide that, at least mathematically, the teaching position makes more sense in the long run.
Doing things that align with our values leaves us much more fulfilled. We have infinite opportunities to serve others, so we need to remind ourselves that a lot of good things (such as helping out at your kids’ school) might not really support our ultimate goals. We can still help out and make strides forward, but we should do so in a way that helps us feel more satisfied.
Add Value to Your To Do List
Values clarification also helps with weekly planning. We can look at our “to do” lists and then compare these tasks with our four key priorities. Ask yourself, “do my plans for the week align with my top values?” If you find that certain areas are a bit lacking, you may want to shift your calendar slightly to ensure that your highest priorities are represented.
Try to plan your week out in advance to the best of your ability so that you have time to reflect. Your core values give you a lifestyle lens to use when you consider your plans in terms of relationships, health routines, and work. You will find that, over time, you begin intuitively prioritizing these needs, drawing success toward yourself.
For example, you may begin to notice that you’re surrounding yourself with friends who are intellectually stimulating, creative, and active—people who help you stay in line with values such as remaining mentally engaged, expressing yourself artistically, and staying healthy. While you don’t want your weekly plan to be too structured (don’t forget to include some “me time”), you can still ensure that at least the basic tenets of your life are maintained over time.
Utilize Free Resources
A list of values, otherwise known as a “life map,” is available on my website and free for all mailing list subscribers. This life map will help you if you’re having trouble identifying your core values by asking questions related to different facets of your life.
You may also want to take this great career assessment at elevationsonline.com to help you transition to your ideal job. Their free career assessment quiz has helped many of my clients identify values, skills, and career interests, offering useful insight into this arena.
If you take part in either or both of these tasks and would like some help reviewing your results, shoot me an email. I have had so many military spouse stay-at-home moms and entrepreneurs take these assessments, and I can really vouch for the results!
Align Your Goals With Your Values
We all value different things, so it’s always worth the time to stop and identify what you prioritize most of all. By clarifying our value statements, we can develop clarity in our lives and really align who we are with what we want to accomplish.
I love when clients’ values perfectly align with their goals. When this happens, it seems like their dreams become so much easier to achieve!