It’s important and valuable to have a life direction.  However, there seems to be a lot of confusion about how to create or connect with your personal inspired vision for your life.  In this article, I hope to provide some insight in just what a life vision comprises, and the qualities of a life vision that will inspire and motivate you and others around you.

There’s some confusion around the concepts we call vision, purpose and mission statements.  What I’ve come to realize is that a life vision is much more expansive and powerful than either purpose or mission.  Purpose and mission are necessarily more narrow and tend to include aspects of measurement and comparison or judgment.  Whereas, vision does not.  Vision does provide direction, but it open and takes you beyond the land of measurements.

A vision is actually a “view” or image of what truly inspires you.  It’s a big picture of the greater possibilities for your life.  When you create your life vision (or rather get in touch with it, because spiritually, it is already there waiting for you to access it) it becomes the inspiration for your every action and focus.  It is the view that will help you create powerful goals and action plans.

A life vision is unlimited because it isn’t a finite landing place.  It’s more of a powerful launching pad.  It will contain possibilities for expansion and growth and development as it fosters new ideas and openings.  And most importantly, a powerful life vision will inspire you and others to take action.

Furthermore, a Life Vision is a powerful picture or image that when held in mind it actually transforms the state of mind of the viewer.  It has the power to expand the mind into the realm of great possibility and inspiration.  It energizes and uplifts your state of being into the higher realm of possibility, joy and creativity.  It also takes you out of the realm of right and wrong and judgment and comparisons.  It brings everyone into a space of present moment creativity.  It isn’t a “future” reality.  It can be seen and felt here and now.

Here are three steps to help you begin to access your life vision.  You can use these for any aspect of your life – health, relationships, career, spirituality, etc.

1) First, enter into a meditation that brings you out of the realm of your day-to-day concerns and into the space of presence and peace.  This is the space where we can here the voice of our higher selves.

2) Let yourself begin to imagine the highest possibility for your life, letting your creativity expand into pictures that you can actually see, taste and feel as they come alive in your imagination

3) Write down what you see – describe the picture.  Describe the view of “how it is” in the realm of possibility.

To help you with this, here is a portion of my life vision.

I see that through my work as a personal life coach for women, clients are powerfully supported for personal and spiritual growth and transformation, so that they may face life’s challenges with courage and wisdom and create their lives with meaning, vision and joy through mindful living.  I see the positive spiritual growth of women living more mindfully and joyfully as a ripple effect, spreading out to bless others – children, spouses, friends, parents, co-workers, communities, the world.

Enjoy creating your new life vision!

For many, the holiday season is stressful – time, money, family demands, travel, end of year deadlines – the list goes on. Sometimes experiencing sanity seems like a more reasonable goal than experiencing joy! Then, to compound the matter, we often become overly concerned for the joy of family members, friends, co-workers. Though well intentioned, all this concern tends to put even more stressful energy into the holiday craze, fueling the fires of overwhelm.

Joy is always found within. In the time of holiday parties, fancy decorations, family gatherings – and shopping! – it’s easy to start thinking that joy might be found in something outside of ourselves. But if we look within to experience joy, we can then en-Joy our situations. That is, we can infuse our environment with joy from our own calm, loving center. The joy we cultivate within makes our whole world an enjoyable place. The stresses still exert their pressures, but we meet them with a sense of peace and hope. Read more of En-Joy the Holiday! (or ANY day)

Thinking of making New Year’s Resolutions? Think again.

The most popular thing to do at New Years (besides drinking champagne) is probably to Make Resolutions. You tell yourself, your friends and your family (and if you’ve overdone it on champagne, perfect strangers!) that next year you’ll do it DIFFERENTLY. Next year, you really are going to lose those extra 20 pounds, even if you have to starve yourself to do it. For a time you stick to your plan. You diet, you join the gym and you lose some weight. Somewhere between Valentine’s Day and June, you lose your momentum. Summer rolls around and you beat up on yourself for not sticking to the diet and you dread putting on a swimsuit. Somewhere between Thanksgiving and Christmas you realize you really did eat that whole plate of cookies and you swear to fast until New Years so you don’t end the year without losing a single pound! Now it’s New Years Eve and you hate the sense of failure to meet your “resolution”, so you try to muster up some confidence to try again next year. (Maybe this contributes to the amount of champagne consumed on New Year’s Eve!)

Instead of making resolutions, what if you Set Intentions for 2009? Read more of Don’t Make Any Resolutions Till You Read This!