Welcome to our latest thought series, Purposeful Hearts! By now, you know that I have great appreciation for self-reflection, both in my own life and the lives of those I serve. Without regular reflection, we lose our ability to measure current progress and envision a more magnificent future.
To that end, this new series will walk you through the process of creating your personal vision statement. In each post, you will confront some heavy-hitting reflection questions designed to guide and shape your vision statement in a sequential and scaffolded fashion. I’ve collected these questions and thought exercises from Stephen Covey, Peter Northouse, and my own consulting work. Trust the process and find a way to capture your answers one week at a time. Let’s get started!
For today, we’re collecting your passions. Take the next several minutes and write down ten activities that you enjoy. Yes, write down (or type) all ten. Picturing yourself in a joyful mood state can help trigger examples: what are you doing when you’re in this mood state? For the best results, choose activities in which you are actively thinking, doing, creating, etc. Bingeing Netflix won’t help you reach your life goals, and it won’t help you develop a personal vision statement that captures your true heart, either! OK, start writing.
All done? Excellent. (I refuse to believe that you’d keep reading without having completed the above exercise.) Scan your ten favorite activities and see if there are any themes or patterns that emerge from your results. Are you consistently engaging in helping behavior? Teaching behavior? Developing healthy habits? Creating something? While you’re pondering the themes, start jotting down any words, phrases, or even new activities that pop into your head.
Wonderful! We’ve reached our final step for today, which is to combine your list of ten activities with your emergent themes to write a list of three final takeaways from this exercise. Your resulting list should boldly represent three aspects of who you are, without which a given day would feel incomplete, unproductive, or dissatisfying. Think of them as your daily must-haves for what you would call a good life.
All set? What you accomplished today in this exercise is an important foundational step in crafting your personal vision statement, so don’t shortchange the process. Dig into who you are and do the work. (HINT: You’ve got a full week until your next exercise, so you’ve got time to get this right. You can do it, and I’ll see you next week!)
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