Creating Your Ten Year Vision for Success

Creating Your Ten Year Vision for Success

For the past few months, I have been focusing with you on how to successfully create short term goals. To be most productive in thinking about your short term goals, you will benefit greatly by going through the process of also creating a personal vision for success. I suggest creating a vision for yourself and your loved ones describing how you would like your life to look in 10 years. Imagine you were 10 years older than you are today. Think about how you want your life to be at that time. Remember as you forge this vision, you will be 10 years older, meaning that some of the things that you can do today, you will not be able to do in 10 years. Furthermore remember, the world may open up for you in new and exciting ways ten years from now. As the Covid epidemic has taught us, we may not be able to predict the future, nor control everything in our lives. However, the more we can focus our minds and what we want for the future, the more likely we will be to achieve much more of what we hope for in the future.

Here are five steps that I have found useful in forging your vision of success.

Step One: Reflect on your passions in life

As you craft your vision, focus on questions that will help you understand your passion for life.

1. What activities bring you the most joy in life?

2. What do you love to do so much that you would do it even if you were not paid for it?

3. What do you love to learn about through your reading and other media consumption?

4. Where do you contribute your time and money?

5. What interesting activities do you do now that you’ve done since you were a teenager?

6. What jobs have you had in your life that were so exciting to you, that you couldn’t wait to go to work. If it wasn’t a job, perhaps it was an experience in school or somewhere else.

Step Two: Reflect on what you do exceptionally well.

While we often struggle to understand these in our own lives, each of us has been gifted with a set of unique talents. Discovering what our strengths and talents are can be key in crafting a successful vision for life. Here are some questions to consider:

1. What do you do with so much ease that people are awed by your competency?

2. What tasks do you do with ease and certainty?

3. When do people think you are at your very best?

4. What two people call upon you for help?

5. At work, what assignments are you eager to do?

6. Is there something for which you are regularly praised?

Step Three: Reflect on your belief about why you think you are here on earth.

As you craft your vision, consider the deeper question of your belief about the meaning of life. Here are a few questions to help; of course, hundreds of thousands of books have been written about this topic.

1. At the end of the day, for what do you feel most grateful?

2. What causes are you devoted to?

3. What do you read, watch, or listen to for inspiration?

4. Who are your heroes and heroines?

5. When you attend a funeral or read an obituary or biography, what about the person’s life most inspires you?

6. Do you have a motto, photo, painting, etc. which inspires you?

Step Four: With who do I want to go with me through my journey of life.

Almost never, do we go through life entirely on our own. Yet, we often are not intentional enough about who joins us on our journey. Here are some thoughts to consider:

1. For those of us who are married and already have children, we still have the choice to choose our friends.

2. Likewise, we can choose to work in an environment where our colleagues bring us joy and a sense of community.

3. Through social media and video conferencing, we can continue to cultivate friendships with people we have known through different periods of our life.

4. We have choices about where we live.

5. We have choices about how involved we will be with our neighbors.

6. Mentorship also is crucial; according to a new book, Abraham Lincoln, for all his gifts, was intentional about seeking out mentors who could help him master oratory, speechwriting, party politics, campaigning, conventions, executive power, and managing a cabinet.

Step Five. Reflect on how much is enough?

We live in a society that is very money-oriented. We have vastly different ideas about this question of “what is enough.” Here are some questions to consider:

1. Do I want a lifestyle similar to my parents?

2. Do I want to earn the same as, better than, or less than my parents and family?

3. What percentage of my time am I willing to devote to earning money?

4. Do my partner and I see eye to eye on this?

5. Have I consulted with a financial planner?

6. Have I talked to someone in my profession about how much they make?

 

For our next Leaders Connect, to be held on February 26, we will discuss goals for mental well-being.

For our next Leaders Connect, to be held on February 26, we will discuss goals for mental well-being. My special guest will be Ethan Kross, author of the acclaimed new book, “Chatter: The Voice in Our Heads, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.” Dr. Kross Is a professor of psychology at the University of Michigan.

I encourage all of you to continue to set your goals for 2021. You can use the chart below to record your goals. Even if you haven’t joined the discussion before, feel free to join us on February 26th to continue to talk about goal setting and how to harness the voice in our heads.