The following article was contributed by : http://www.thecoachingtoolscompany.com/
I get a lot of questions from coaches who want to help their clients with life planning or life visioning. Often people – and their coaches – are looking for a catch-all tool, workbook, visualisation or some other technique to help their clients.
The thing is, there are endless ways to identify a vision for our lives. Maybe that’s why we sometimes feel overwhelmed and need help.
In my experience there are two main ways a life vision can help our clients. If you don’t know what you want you’ll end up with what you get!
1) DIRECTION: A life vision gives us something to work towards. It gives us clarity so we can go through our days knowing we’re working towards what we want in life – and what’s truly important to us. This clarity of direction helps us make the right decisions and choices – for us.
2) INSPIRATION: A life vision should be inspirational. If your client’s life vision is ho-hum, they’re not going to want to take action.
A good life vision exercise or plan creates a desirable future that gives us direction, helps focus our lives AND inspires us to take action to create it.
Here are the Life Vision Exercises I Use With My Clients:
First, a series of 3 simple, but powerful one-page life vision exercises to help clients connect with themselves and what they truly want from life.
1. Rocking Chair Life Vision Exercise. This is a writing or journaling exercise where they imagine being 90, happy, healthy and look back over their life and what they have achieved. This gives a broad life vision – and points to key life values which can be helpful when helping to identify a client’s values.
2. Get Perspective Vision Exercise. This exercise asks people to detail where they want to be in 10 years, then 5, 2, 1 and 3 months time. The exercise deliberately works back from 10 years to the present day so that they get a sense of what they need to do NOW to make their 10 year goals happen.
3. 3 Month Vision Worksheet. This exercise asks people to consider where they would like to be in 3 months time in key life areas (eg. Personal Life, Home and Family, Health and Well-being, Career). It then asks for obstacles and who they need to be to achieve these goals.
When you do these 3 life vision exercises in sequence like this you first get a broad overview of the vision our clients have for their life. Then you gradually bring it back to the present day/immediate future. This tells them what to focus on NOW (or in the next 3 months) that fits beautifully into the overall vision they have for their life. And there is plenty of scope for additional coaching or homework around each of the exercises.
And here are 7 other Life Vision Exercise Ideas:
1. The Eulogy Exercise: What would they want said about them in their eulogy – or at their funeral/memorial service? What would the like written on their tombstone? (use this one with care and in good rapport)
2. Ask them to write out their “Ideal Day”. They should start their ideal day from when they wake up – and write out what they would like their day to be like. What would they do? How would they feel? Who would they see? What are they working on/towards? etc.
3. Creative Visualisation. Talk them through meeting their future self and explore the life, relationships, environment etc. that their future self is living.
4. The Magic Wand Question. If they had a magic wand, what life would they create for themselves? What would they do in the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and then 25 years?
5. Use a Wheel of Life Template and ask your client what they would like their life to look like in each of the key areas? Options include writing a list of what they want in each of the wheel segments, or using the wheel headings as homework to journal more deeply into each area.
6. Devote a whole session to their life visioning. Put pieces of paper on the floor representing the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and then 25 years. Get them to step on each piece of paper in sequence (starting with 25 years and working backwards), close their eyes and then ask them questions. What do they see/feel/hear? Who is there with them? Where are they? What do they love about their life right now? To go more deeply you can use the Wheel of Life Categories to ask what is going on in their life. Make notes for them as they go and then (if they are interested) give them homework to summarise and write this up in their own words.
7. Get your client to create a Vision Board for their LIFE. Ask them to cut out pictures, quotes – anything inspiring that represents the life they want for themselves. The items don’t have to make logical sense, they just pick images that appeal to them. Then arrange and glue the images to a large piece of paper. Hey presto – a vision board for their life!
Top Tip: The more people write, the more life vision exercises they do, the more detail they will go into. And the more rich and detailed their life vision is, the more meaningful and inspiring it will be.
Like I said, there are endless ways to help people create a strategic life vision. Take an idea, play with it. Get creative and have fun!
“The victory of success is half won when one gains the habit of setting goals and achieving them. Even the most tedious chore will become endurable as you parade through each day convinced that every task, no matter how menial or boring, brings you closer to fulfilling your dreams.” Og Mandino