Creating Your Vision

Most corporations and businesses have a mission or vision statement. The U.S. Army’s old adage is “Be all that you can be.” Employers often distribute their statement to employees at every level. They post it on their Web sites, display it on prominent bulletin boards, and print it in various company publications. Every employee is expected to know this statement. Ask those same employees whether they have a vision statement for their own lives and careers, and far too often the answer is no.
If you want to have the best personal life and a successful career, you need to think about your goals. The good life, no matter how you define it, doesn’t just happen. You need to set an agenda for both your short- and long-term goals. Think of your life as a negotiation. The better prepared you are, the smoother the negotiation is likely to go. Even a little planning is more than most people do, so making a small effort now puts you far ahead of the pack. The first step in creating a master plan for yourself is to identify your vision. A vision is an image of a desired future. The word vision is from the Latin videre, meaning to see. You should state your vision by describing, in present tense, a picture of the future you see for yourself. Your vision should be as rich in detail and as visual as possible. The description must be clear, understandable, and descriptive. Most important, your vision needs to motivate you. You count on your vision to give your life shape and direction. Here are some vision statements. I know that the first three have worked very well.

• Nordstrom: “To become America’s store of choice through the commitment of each employee to provide customers the very best in quality, value, selection, and service.”
• Microsoft: “Someday we’ll see a computer on every desk and in every home.”
• My law office: “To help my clients realize their dreams.”
• Young businessman: “To climb up the corporate ladder in an honest and professional way.”

In his book Think and Grow Rich, Napoleon Hill states that 98 percent of people are in their current jobs because of indecision — they never decided what they wanted to do in their lives in the first place. That failure to form a vision of what the future looks like explains why so many people feel that they may have a life purpose, but they have no idea what that life purpose is. Forget about the money, this is just a very unfortunate way to spend your life. It’s important to go through the process of evaluating your vision statement each year. In the past, I assessed my vision verbally. Today, I make sure to write my vision down. Keeping a written record creates better accountability. Your vision is a long-term, ongoing, open-ended process. When you read your vision statement, it motivates you to passionately seek to achieve your goals.