How to Write Your Own Personal Vision Statement
“To succeed in your mission, you must have single-minded devotion to your goal.” Abdul Kalam
In this article, we’ll talk about how to write your personal vision statement. In a previous article I gave some examples of personal vision statements created other people such as such as Oprah Winfrey, Richard Branson, Mother Teresa etc. You can use these to give you some ideas on how to write your personal vision statement. This series of articles takes you through 4 steps. Let’s get started.
Step 1: What Are Your Goals?
The first step in creating your personal vision step is going to be writing down your goals for your life. What do you want? Do you want to start a multi-million-dollar company or a church for a specific group of people? Do you want to become an astronaut? An artist? A stay-at-home parent?
You need to create this list before you go any further. Start by brainstorming. Ask God for wisdom. Meditate on scriptures such as, “For I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord, “plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” (Jeremiah 29:11, NIV)
Here’s another good scripture to meditate on: “I will instruct you and teach you in the way you should go; I will counsel you with my loving eye on you.” (Psalm 32:8, NIV)
Get a sheet of paper and a pen (not a computer) and write down every single thing you’d like to do in your life. Don’t hold back and don’t censor yourself. Write down everything that comes to mind.
If you have a hard time doing this all at one time, that’s okay. Take some time with it. Carry the list around with you for a few days and add to it whenever something crosses your mind. Keep going until you feel like it’s completed.
Again, don’t worry about what anyone else’s list would look like. Everyone is different and has a unique calling with different goals. Your list of lifetime goals will not be the same as the people you know. That’s normal and to be expected.
Next, go down this list and think through every item you wrote down. Is this something that you want in your heart of hearts? Or is it something you think you want? Or that you think you should want? Mark these latter items off at once.
What’s left is a list of things you do want to achieve in your life. Which ones do you most want to accomplish? Some of them are going to exert a stronger pull on you than others. Put a star beside these.
After you’ve done that, go back through the list and consider the compatibility of all of your goals. You’re probably going to find that some of them are contradictory or at least can’t be accomplished together. You’re not going to become a famous actor and an astronaut at the same time, for example.
This is the hard part. It’s time to choose. You’re going to have to make some painful choices here -which goals do you want most? Which are you willing to sacrifice in order to get to the others? Mark off the ones that don’t make the cut. It will hurt, but you have to do it.
When you’re done, copy the surviving goals down onto a clean sheet of paper. This is the beginning of your vision statement. As you read this article on how to write your personal vision statement, you can see that it takes a lot of thought. Now let’s go on to the next step, which is finding your strengths and weaknesses.
Here are the rest of the articles in this series:
Writing a Personal Vision Statement for Your Life
11 Examples of Personal Vision Statements
Step 2: What Are Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Discovering Your Core Values: Finishing Your Personal Vision
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