Why Bother With a Personal Vision?

A few issues back I wrote a tips sheet on how to create a Vision Board (otherwise knows as vision collage, or treasure map). A great preliminary visioning exercise that helps you begin to define what it is you next want for yourself in your life. As discussed, there are lots of other ways to do visioning work beyond this classic exercise. I’ll list a few here, however I think its worth going into why visioning is a useful thing to do, regardless of what method you use.

Its Like Planning a Trip

Personal Visioning is like planning a travel trip. You can go the spontaneous route and just jump in the car (if you have positive intentions and luck, things can turn out great that way). However, you really improve your odds of having an enjoyable experience by pulling out the map and charting your course first. Doing research and getting clear about what you want goes a long way in getting the most out of your investment. Besides, the trip really begins when you start to imagine it in your mind. Going over desires and mapping out ideas starts the manifestation process. Gets your emotions into the game. You start to sense and feel things in a more tangible way and the momentum picks up speed.

Or, Like Writing a Business Plan

Same thing happens when one does Business Plans for new companies. Through the act, you gain clarity and you start to get excited about the possibilities. I myself resisted doing a “real” business plan for years (until I did one with my client Alan Pasemko, who is great at them). Once I got to it I had a blast doing mine. The underlying energy is the same as personal visioning work. So, if visioning is good for your business then you know its going to be good for your life too.

Its Personally Empowering

Creating a Personal Vision for yourself is an act of empowerment. It is a symbolic, proactive stance – rather than passive and reactive. You can let life happen to you, or you can choose to make it happen – its all up to you. By doing Visioning work, you turn the tables. You notify yourself, others and life in general about what you now want. A very powerful act. It is asking. In order to receive you first need to ask. A Personal Vision organizes and galvanizes your asking. Forget about what others want. Or what mass society says you should want.  What do you want? You count and you matter. Its your life. Go for what you want. Get clear. Get empowered.

A Seed Gets Sprouted

When you take the time to create a Vision for yourself, then your desired future becomes more real to you. You start to really sense it, taste it, smell it, feel it, etc. You have tricked yourself into a sensing a new reality. When this happens the real magic begins. The act of envisioning your future is like a seed that has sprouted. This imaginal seed begins to grow. Your ideas move from thought, into thought-form, then into being real things that exist in your life (people, places, situations, etc). They won’t happen without first envisioning them. You’ve got to think them and feel them first. Then they can show up in your real life. Through an attraction process.

You Get More Comfy

Personal Visions allow you to get more comfortable with what you next want. To have it ‘grow on you’ so to speak. There is a stretch involved in visioning work. Like a rubber band. You don’t want to snap right back into your regular shape. You want to maintain the stretch. And bit by bit be able to ‘hold’ or ‘allow’ your new reality. Eventually make it your norm. Visions allow you to do this. They allow you to ‘find the feeling place’ of what you want (a turn of phrase that my Law of Attraction teachers, Abraham-Hicks use a lot).

For example, if you want a new level of prosperity, your Vision allows you to define that level and then to imagine and feel what it would be like to have that wealth or abundance. Or, if you want a different kind of relationship than perhaps you have ever experienced to date, your Vision allows you to try that on for size. To really poke around and clarify what you want and how this would feel. You need to feel it first to ‘activate the vibration’ of having it. Like attracts like. Visions allow you to crank up your vibrational state so you can be a match to and attract the things you want.

Its How Everything Gets Created

This process of first imagining and then creating in the physical world, is how everything gets created. Anything you can see around you, somehow was first envisioned and conceived in the non-physical and feeling state before it existed in the physical. Buildings, businesses, bodies, gardens, products, relationships, transportation systems – you name it. They were first all ideas. Your life is currently a composition of all the things you have been thinking and feeling. Doing Personal Vision work just helps the process along. Makes it more deliberate. More of what you want as opposed to what you don’t want or things happening on automatic or default.

Enlist the Help of Others

You can of course go it alone, but one of the big benefits of doing visioning work is enlisting the help of others. We all know of charismatic leaders who are effective in rallying their family, group, community or even country. What they have in common is a strong vision. When you have done the inner work of developing a strong Personal Vision for yourself, then you are ready, if you want to, to enlist the help of others. Often your Vision might be so large that it requires the help of others to manifest it, even many others. A good vision is magnetic. It attracts others who resonate with it and repels those who don’t. By getting clear on what you want, you are able to communicate it more effectively and recruit others to your mission.

Because It Feels Good

Another reason as to why bother: visioning just feels good! It will get you off of thinking about your past or your present (particularly if they don’t feel good) and onto thinking about a positive, motivating, pleasurable future. Its fun to do. It can be quite delicious. Don’t have what you currently want? Stop focusing on that. Use it to define what you do want. And imagine having that. It’s the switch from ‘wanting’ to ‘having’. Imagine the have place. And revel in that shift of feelings and perspective. Ahhhhhh. Doesn’t that feel good?!  That is the trick. The ‘secret’ (ha ha) if you will. Find the feeling good place. It seems simplistic and perhaps a little silly or unrealistic (our rational minds can freak out a bit with this). But imagining / visioning is a very powerful act. And its still one of life’s free pleasures – its ok to feel good!

Its an Ongoing Process

Don’t think that you have to have it all figured out and your Personal Vision is a one-shot-deal. Be light about it. Visioning is an ongoing process – it’ll move around a bit and that is ok. Go with it. Keep evolving and tweaking your Vision as life makes you clear about what you next want. That is the fun of it. Life gets to flow through you. As Abraham-Hicks says, we are flow-ers of energy. Focus on what you want and flow the energy of having it through you.

Then attract the real deal because you are an energetic match. That is the process that Personal Visioning kicks off. Its totally worth the ‘bother’!

© 2007 Christina L. Merkley

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Christina Merkley, “The SHIFT-IT Coach” and creator of the SHIFT-IT Graphic Coaching Process® is a Visioning and Strategic Planning Expert specializing in Graphic Facilitation and Law of Attraction techniques. Based in charming Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, she works deeply with individuals, couples and organizations in defining and getting what they really, really want. For more information visit: www.shift-it-coach.com.

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