The Highlands Company Personal Vision Activity (PDF)

The Highlands Company Personal Vision Activity © The Highlands Company | www.highlandsco.com | Page 1 Your personal vision is how you commit to live your life. It influences all areas including family, spirituality, physical well-being, leisure, and work. A clear personal vision is an integration of your abilities, interests, personality, values, goals, skills/experience, family of origin, and stage of adult development. If you have a personal vision, you will have a guide for decisions. You will likely become meaning driven, inner directed, and think in the long-term. You will use your personal vision to maintain balance in your life. Studies consistently show that this one factor, personal vision, is more important in both success and satisfaction than any other factor – more important than intelligence, socio-economic background, or education. With a personal vision. You will be able to work within a balance cycle rather than in a stress cycle. In the balance cycle, you will be more satisfied, more productive, and experience more meaning and enjoyment. In comparison, without a personal vision you could end up in the stress cycle where you experience more burnout and often feel as though your efforts are wasted and lack meaning.  The Highlands Company Personal Vision Activity © The Highlands Company | www.highlandsco.com | Page 2 SAMPLE PERSONAL VISION STATEMENTS Example #1 I will live each day as though I had all the power and influence necessary to make it a perfect world. Through listening to and serving others, I will learn new ideas and gain different perspectives. I will strive to gain mastery over life’s challenges through increasing my circle of influence and de-emphasizing those areas of concern over which I have no control. I will behave in a manner so as to become a light, not a roadblock, for others who choose to follow or lead me. I will trust my dreams and be the prisoner of nothing. I will use my private victories unselfishly by trying to create value for others. The pursuit of excellence will determine the options I decide to exercise and the paths I choose to travel. I will expect no more of others than I expect of myself. I will seek new sources for learning and growth – nature, family, literature, new acquaintances. I will show love rather than expect love. I choose to focus upon being effective versus efficient. I choose to make a difference in this world. Example #2 To be the person my children look to with pride when they say, “This is my dad.” To be the one my children come to for love, comfort, and understanding. To be the friend known as caring and always willing to listen empathetically to their concerns. To be a person not willing to win at the cost of another’s spirit. To be a person who can feel pain and not want to hurt another. To be the person who speaks for the one that cannot, to listen for the one that cannot hear, see for the one without sight, and have the ability to say, “You did that, not I.” To have my deeds always match my words through the grace of God. Example #3 My personal vision is to have a life of meaning for myself and others. It is important to me to live my life in a way that shows kindness, care and concern for family and friends and even strangers, earns respect for myself based on a recognition of my accomplishments and abilities, maintains a sense of appreciation of the beauty of nature, and a sense of humor. I want to have a career/life that includes constant learning and improvement for myself, but that also creates an atmosphere of pleasurable learning and improvement for others – whether as a teacher, career administrator (personnel training, etc.), housing expert, writer or whatever. I want to work with and around people, and it is important to me that they like me; but it is even more important to me that they feel that I have helped them in some way – not necessarily that I do a specific good deed, but more that some kindness or thoughtfulness or wisdom of mine has touched them.  The Highlands Company Personal Vision Activity © The Highlands Company | www.highlandsco.com | Page 3 DRAFT YOUR PERSONAL VISION Step 1 - Build a model Step 2 - Draft your personal vision Step 3 - Share with the group Step 4 - Revisit your personal vision to revise periodically Focus on your entire life. You will have an opportunity to relate your Personal Vision specifically to your career in another activity.