This is the second part of a five-part series on creating clarity and building useful systems and habits. In part one, we clarified values. I’ll put a link to that video in the description below.
And today, we’re going to be using those values to shape something that’s equally powerful, a vision that inspires, directs, and sustains your growth. Now, if values are the compass, vision is the horizon line. It’s where you’re headed.
It’s more than a vague picture of success. It’s a lived-in image of what matters most to you in motion. And a well-crafted vision, it does more than just motivate.
It gives you a lens through which you can make better decisions, a reason to keep going when things get tough, and a way to bring others along the journey with you. This video is going to look at what is a vision, the three most common missed opportunities, and next steps. So let’s go.
What is a vision? And let’s get clear on terms. A vision, it’s not a goal. Goals are specific, measurable targets.
Visions, they’re a little bit larger. They describe the kind of world you want to live in, the way you want to show up, and the legacy you want to build. Vision statements, they’re not just for organizations and companies.
Although if you are starting an organization or a company, or you are part of one, a vision statement is a really important asset to have. But visions, they can be both for organizations and for individuals. Basically, a vision is what makes the goals worth pursuing in the first place.
And too often, people and organizations, they chase achievements without considering the kind of life or the kinds of opportunities that those achievements actually create. And a powerful vision, having a really well-crafted vision story, prevents the trap of doing work towards something that’s not really worth it. For example, someone might say, I want to be the director of my department.
That’s a goal. But the vision behind it might be, I want to create a work environment where people feel seen, supported, and inspired to do their best work. That’s a vision statement worth working toward.
And when I work with clients as a coach, I encourage them to write those vision statements down and to make them feel like memories from the future, rich with detail, emotionally grounded. You should be able to close your eyes and feel the life that you’re building and feel that vision. And writing down your vision statements, this is just best practice for living a life that you feel like aligns with your values and your vision and your actions.
And why this vision matters? A well-crafted vision, it does change the way you operate. You move from reacting. You start directing.
It gives your days a sense of direction, especially when things get messy. And things will get messy. You will have setbacks, detours, frustrations.
But when you know your purpose and you can see where you’re going, it adds to your resilience. It becomes a strategic tool. In vision, it also makes it easier to collaborate.
People rally behind leaders that have a clear direction. And the clearer your vision, the more magnetic your presence becomes and the easier it is for people to say yes to work with you. Also important, vision helps you navigate choice.
With every new opportunity, every difficult decision, you can ask, does this move me closer to the life that I’m building or further away? This vision, it becomes a very clear marker point for a way for you to make those really important decisions in your life. And now let’s get to the three most common missed opportunities. Missed opportunity number one is focusing on the outcome instead of the experience.
Now, a lot of vision work stalls here. People list their outcomes. They want more income, more freedom, a bigger team.
Those might be part of the vision, but they’re not the heart of the vision. What matters more is how you want to feel, what kind of impact you want to have, the kind of rhythms, relationships, and responsibilities that fill your days. For example, instead of looking at a vision, you know, creating something like, I want to publish a book.
A more vivid vision might be, I am sitting in a small bookstore, hearing someone tell me that a chapter I wrote helped them through a difficult time. Outcomes are fine, but the experience is what makes that vision real. You can start to expand on that.
I want to create a book that changes people’s lives. And I want to run into a stranger, someone who just recognizes me from the book and tells me the impact that it has. That is a vision.
That is something that has tangibility to it. Now, missed opportunity number two is leaving the vision static. Now, a vision, it’s not a one-time declaration.
It is a living document. A lot of organizations, they will create vision statements that talk about where they want to go. A vision is a future-oriented, this is where I want to go, but it also has impact on the present moment by basically setting the landscape.
Now, this is a document that needs to be revisited, you know, maybe once a quarter, once a year. Sometimes these vision statements, they stay static and they, you know, they are tried and true, but most often they can grow. Life changes, we grow.
And when you share your vision with other people and you’re chasing, you know, you realize, okay, you get input on this. And sometimes you’re chasing a future that doesn’t really fit. When you’re working as a client with a coach, it’s helpful to visit this vision regularly.
Your coach might ask, well, what’s still true about this vision? What’s changed? What surprised you? And when your vision doesn’t evolve, it risks becoming irrelevant and it doesn’t inspire the way that it used to. And this leads to missed opportunity number three, which is not embedding a vision into your daily life. This is probably the biggest missed opportunity.
People will write vision statements and then they’ll treat them like, you know, just like part of the deal and then file it away. These need to be front and center. Like put them on your wall, read them.
You know, I have those vision statements become a part of the actual decisions that you make. And this is where magic happens because the vision essentially becomes a lens or a filter with which you can make decisions. You can look and say, yeah, does this action step bring me closer or further away from my vision? And you look at it every day.
Like, did I create space for this vision to happen? Did I lead with courage, even when I was uncertain? Did I continue to make the time for the people who matter the most? And did I use my energy today to chase what I was going after? Your vision should speak into your systems, your habits, and your calendar. It’s not just a dream, but it’s a dream that inspires present tense action. This is vision at its very best.
And now a final thought. You can also play with the timeline of your vision. Traditionally for organizations, vision has been something that is 10, maybe 15, 20 years in the future.
It is what the organization is working towards, but you don’t have to limit it to that. You know, a 10-year future vision, this is a really useful thing to have. Like you need one if you’re starting your own coaching practice or if you are working in an organization.
But you don’t have to stop there. You can create a two-year vision, two-month, two-week, two-day. It’s the kind of thing where once you start creating one for one specific area of your life, there becomes clarity around it.
You start to get a sense of, yeah, this is what a vision, this is the impact that a vision can make in my life. That starts to matter. It gets exciting.
Then you can start creating vision statements for, you know, other areas of your life in different timeframes. This is when these things really come to life, especially when you align vision with your values and you get clarity and you start to add vivid detail to them and you start to feel that immediacy. This is where vision starts to really overlap with visualization, which is one of the most established tools in sports psychology and what elite athletes do.
I mean, elite athletes, they mentally rehearse every little detail before big performances. They feel the field, the rhythm of the movement, the noise of the crowd. They use visualization to prime both mindset and performance and you can too.
This is one of the most important tools that I use on a daily basis. So this is part 2 of 5. In this next episode of the series, we’re going to walk through mission statements, how you can take this vision and move it into a mission statement.
I’ll let you know, put a link below when that video drops. And if you want to coach, if you want to try coaching right away, you know, on demand, there’s an app coach theory, which I developed. You can book a coaching session right now on demand, just a few clicks away.
It’s app.coachtheory.com to sign up. And thank you for tuning in. Thank you for the likes and the subscribes, the comments.
Thank you. I really appreciate it. And I hope to see you soon with some more content.
