Can we talk about vision and how planning and management skills can help shape your vision? As a mother of a large family I have to use skills often to keep things flowing for my family. Having a vision is key.
So I looked up the definition of a visionary. It was simply defined as thinking about or planning the future with imagination or wisdom. Imagination. Wisdom. When I think about vision, I think about it as “the big picture” or how you want to shape your life. The ultimate form of who you really are and what you hope to accomplish at the end of this life.
For each person, for each family, for each couple, the vision is different because our unique DNA, our unique characteristics, natural talents, experiences, prayers, and willingness to hear from the creator, all shape the vision we have for our lives.
Ultimately, our vision is more than the circumstances that we see today. Furthermore, if our vision isn’t clearly defined in our lives, ultimately our goals and checklists will seem empty.
A simple definition of goals is a desired result. So, when I think of goal setting, I think of the measurable instances we use to make sure we are aligning with our vision. For example, a part of the vision for my husband and I, is creating a successful future for our children. So of course I’ve set some goals to measure progress for that portion of our vision.
For example, I’ve found that the physical discipline of playing a sport, being a part of a team, and pushing your body physically helps to shape mental discipline. It helps with learning dedication, consistency, making wise choices, dealing with individuals from different backgrounds, thinking on the fly, I could go on and on.
So if you look at my vision board one of my goals is cultivating each one of my children in their sport and that’s measurable. It’s more exact then just saying “successful future”. To break it down even further, I can say my goal is to make sure each of our children is involved in at least one season of sports play each year.
From there we get into planning and checklists—checklists are simple. In the example that I used one of my checklists has things like looking for leagues, putting money to the side for fees and equipment, creating a schedule for the family, getting physicals and turning in paperwork etc.
Here is the thing, my children having a successful future is a huge part of my vision. Getting physicals is not a huge part of my vision. However, it’s ultimately necessary in order to follow the hierarchy of checklists, goals, to vision. Some things have to happen to make other goals possible or more likely. When we are truly connected to our vision, it’s not just words on a paper, pictures on a board, or words in a planner. Our vision shapes our goals, our goals shape our checklists, our checklists shape our daily activities and that’s how I’m now measuring daily success.
So for me, realigning or changing my vision as I experienced growth this year, did not mean that my vision changed at all. What has changed are some of my goals, as well as my planning, because here’s the thing— nothing that I do on a daily basis should be a barrier to the ultimate way that I want to live my life. So once I focused on my goals as a measurement for moving towards my vision, and stopped confusing planning with vision, or even goals with vision for that matter, it became easy to rearrange and realign what needed to be changed. So now before I begin writing in my planner I ask myself, is this linked to a goal, and is this goal linked to my vision.
That’s how household and life planning should be serving you on a more practical level. Keeping you balanced and focused on how the things you are doing daily ultimately affect your vision.
So take a look at your goals and evaluate, how much or little are your plans line up with your vision.
Add what needs to be added, remove what needs to be removed, but do not stop pushing yourself and re-focusing on your vision, because ultimately that vision is the imagination & wisdom that will shape your daily habits!
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About the Author Meet Raquel
Raquel Phillips is the writer of lifestyle blog, Coastal House Kids, self proclaimed creative, and self taught baker. The goal of her blog is to support, encourage, uplift, tell stories to, and offer and receive advice from mommies with unconventional lives — mommies with busy, full, and sometimes chaotic lives who need to be reminded that they are not alone! Raquel is a wife, and mother of 6 amazing children ages 2–14. She resides in Virginia Beach, VA.