How does Your Garden Grow... Creating Goals for the Future

          We planted a garden in late April with everything that you need to have a wonderful home grown salad.  Tomatoes, lettuce, peppers and onions.  I watered it every day and kept vigilance over it to make sure that the plants were growing.  I watched and watched and watered and watered…. Nothing I thought…. But then the first tomatoes and then another and then 5, 10, 20 tomatoes.  The lettuce came up from seed and the peppers are incredible. When I planted the garden I took pictures and filed it away on my phone.   I looked back on the past picture of when I first planted the garden…. It was incredible the growth of the plants.  The fruits of my labors were and are paying off.  Growing slowly but expanding to give us the vegetables to make an incredible salad.

          I contemplated this and thought how ironic that a garden is just like so many things in life. ideas that I planted and started in my life have grown and matured just like the garden.  It is truly amazing what you can do by focusing and creating a vision of where you want to go in your life. One of the best tools that I have found to help me grow the “seeds” of my ideas is writing vision and goals down.  I review them daily so that I know the path that I’m creating in my life.  My daily review helps me to connect to the knowledge, people and things to realize these goals.   I'm still working the list but I know that what you think about comes about and creating the vision is the key.

          When writing your vision statement and goals think of you in the future and ask yourself some key questions.  Remember to give yourself time frames like I see myself writing a bestselling book and publishing it before the end of the year….

• What are your values?
• What is your purpose in life?
• How would you like to be described by your friends, relative, coworkers etc.?  What do you need to do to ensure this is true?
• What do you want to be doing?  How do you see your ideal day/week?
• Where are you living?  Whom do you see around you?
• What actions do you need to take to make it happen?
• What changes do you want to be a part of?  What is your legacy?
• What are the different roles in your life (parent, spouse, worker etc.) and how will you evolve in each of them? 

              
         The truth is it all starts with a "seed" that we plant in our mind and many times until we look back we don’t realize that goals we set were realized.   It really takes planting the idea of what we want into our subconscious and letting it grow.  We can create incredible things if we believe in ourselves and our vision for the future.

Don’t Put Your Vision on a Shelf

Now that you have created a personal vision statement. We can expand these into our goals an aspirations. We looked at our physical, spiritual, work or career, family, social relationships, financial security, mental improvement and attention, and fun things that we want to achieve in the next year and five years.  Now how do we expand these into goals and inspirations?  The next step that I want you to take, is to write each of your visions into sentences.  These sentences should be exactly what you will obtain and the sentence use emotional words. 

For example By this time next year I will have written and published an inspirational book on Motivational Business Leadership.  I will publish this book on Amazon.

Now that you have your goals for this coming year and the next five years, place the list next to your bed.  Every morning and every night pick up the list and read the list.  Feel these things as being a part of your life and existing now.  Before you know if this will become a part of your life and your vision will become your reality.  One last thing make this something that is a living list as you accomplish something add a new goal.  If you have additional goals add them to the list. 

Thoughts become reality…..

Create A Personal Vision Statement

Your personal vision statement guides your life and provides the direction necessary to chart the course of your days and the choices you make about your career. Your personal vision statement is the light shining in the darkness toward which you turn to find your way. It illuminates your way.

Your life has a number of important facets or dimensions, all of which deserve some attention in your personal vision statement. Write one important goal for each of them: physical, spiritual, work or career, family, social relationships, financial security, mental improvement and attention, and fun.

•If you never had to work another day in your life, how would you spend your time instead of working?

•When your life is ending, what will you regret not doing, seeing, or achieving?

•What strengths have other people commented on about you and your accomplishments? What strengths do you see in yourself?

•What weaknesses have other people commented on about you and what do you believe are your weaknesses?

My own personal vision statement includes such items as reading and writing every day; coaching and training; writing a motivational book; sharing a lifetime of knowledge about people, management, and workplaces with a vast international audience; having a positive impact on every person with whom I come in contact; living daily a life dedicated to integrity, commitment, challenge, and joy; valuing a few close friends; valuing family relationships; being at all times aware of and engaged in my natural environment; inventing and writing about recipes and food; traveling the world to experience its richness; watching plays and movies; listening to music; never having to worry about money