Have a Vision, Not a Goal!

If you want to accomplish anything in life, you can increase your chances of success by having a clear Vision. Having a vision is the most important thing to get right as this is what sets you on your path to whatever it is you want to achieve. This is essentially the same as setting your trajectory and without a trajectory, you don’t stand much chance of getting to your destination. Everyone in life has goals, be it in their career or their personal life. Unfortunately, many people don’t know how to correctly write goals and this can end up preventing them from standing any chance of success.

But wait… before you set off to write a goal you may be starting out with the wrong intent. Because ‘goals’ aren’t nearly as useful as visions — which is what we’re going to explore here.

The Difference Between a Goal and a Vision?

So what’s the difference between a goal and a vision? Essentially, a goal is something that you write down and that is very clear and simple. For example, a goal may be to ‘lose 5lbs in a month’. That is a goal, but it’s not as effective as a vision designed to the same end.

This same ambition posed as a vision would instead be more the idea of being in shape. To create the best vision you need to use all of your senses, and visualise yourself looking the way you want to look and feeling healthy. You could imagine yourself fitting nicely in your clothes, feeling confident and knowing you are in control of your body and what you put in it. That’s your vision.

A vision could also be an image of yourself standing in an office block and looking out over the world, knowing that you’re in a position of great importance and power.

This is a much more abstract concept that nevertheless helps you to get a picture of what you want and what the emotion behind that goal is.

Tune in tomorrow where I’ll talk about why visions work better than goals…