Step 1 in creating your personal vision statement is going to be writing down your goals for your life. What do you want? Do you want better health? A diet that works for your body, rather than against it? Do you want to work from home? What non-health goals do you have?
You need to create this list before you go any further. Start by brainstorming. It works better if you use pen and paper (not a computer, it’s so easy to get distracted). 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 at once, 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 is complete.
Again, don’t worry about what anyone else’s list would look like. Everyone is an individual and unique. Every person has different goals. Your list of lifetime goals will be different from every person 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 really want in your heart of hearts? Or is it something you think you want? Or that you think you should want? Cross 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. Are they contradictory? You may find it difficult to balance, getting enough sleep and getting up earlier to exercise, 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? Cross off the ones that don’t make the cut. It will hurt, but you have to do it.
When you’re done, copy the remaining goals down onto a clean sheet of paper. This is the step 1 of developing your personal vision statement. We’ll cover steps 2-4 over the next three blogposts.