How to Vision Your Best Future and Achieve Your Dreams

Do you have a vision of the life you want to lead in the future? A real, crystal-clear picture? How often do you think about it? Embellish it? Fine-tune it? Do your dreams include vivid examples of what your life will be like after you achieve them? When you’re actually living that future vision, living the dream? No? Well, it’s time to focus on your vision. It’s time to start the process that will enable you to achieve your dreams!

Start by Envisioning Your Best Future Self

I’ve written before about how describing our best future selves can be affirming and can help us actualize our dreams. Here’s one simple example of how to start. Just write out characteristics that describe your best future self, daily, and do it in the present tense. For example, whether it is true or not, I might write:

• I love myself as much as I love my children.
• I travel to a new foreign country every year.
• I’m financially secure.
• I work because I want to but can retire whenever I choose.

Writing a few statements like this every day helps us concretely articulate our desired life. It also actually helps us to reach our goals. Be skeptical if you wish, but I’m 100% positive that it’s one of the reasons I’ve achieved many of the things I’ve set out to accomplish.

How Positive Visualization Can Help You Achieve Your Dreams

Many people “pooh pooh” the strength of positive thinking. God knows why, but some just don’t want to accept that we can influence our own happiness. But darn it, the science is there to back this up. Physicists have even proven that the thoughts of physicists conducting experiments can influence the outcome of those experiments. So, can we, just for argument’s sake, accept that we can channel positive energy into our lives? And how about we invest the energy spent trying to disprove these notions in a more productive way.

How to Begin the process to Achieve Your Dreams

Let’s not just write words, but let’s begin to collect pictures, photos, inspiring quotes, symbols. Anything that helps us not only verbalize our future, but visualize it, too. Let’s include images of specific, tangible things that will be evidence that we have achieved your future goals. And let’s collect all those things and create our own beautiful, inspiring, complex and fascinating vision boards.

How to Achieve Your Dreams Using a Vision Board

I know, it’s kind of a flash back to the 1980s when these were first pretty hip.  But the idea still works. I have a vision board in my home office and look at it every day. It grounds me, helps me remember what’s important to me, and what I hope to achieve next. It works for me, and it can work for you, too: your image for your ideal future will become more easily visualized through your boards. As a result, you will begin to develop a more powerful impression of the future life you want to live. And this impression can become a source of data to help inform hourly, daily, weekly, monthly, or once-in-a-lifetime decisions.

Decision Time? Check In with Your Vision Board!

We all know how it feels when we have a tough choice to make.  We find ourselves lying awake, dwelling on it for hours. Should I? Or shouldn’t I? Well, now that we have our future self, life, vision described in words, pictures, and all other forms of inspiration, those decisions become much easier to make. All we have to do is ask ourselves one question.  If I do this, does it take me closer to my future vision? Or does it take me further away? For example:

• If we desire financial security – yet are contemplating making a large, frivolous purchase.
• How about if we desire to be fit and healthy – but we’re being offered cheesecake?
• What about if we’re committed to loving ourselves as much as we love others – yet we’re debating whether or not to make time for self-care?
• Perhaps one of the most important decisions to make can be whether or not to stay in a relationship.  Does your partner honor your vision of your future? Does he or she support you in moving towards it? Or do you drift further away from your own personal goals, based on his or her priorities?

So maybe let’s try to dial back the agonizing.

We truly do hold much of our future in our own hands.

Let’s get bold, clear and ambitious with our visions of our future goals.

Then, let’s get bossy, disciplined, and committed.

Let’s keep our promises to ourselves.

Act the way that will help us achieve our dreams.

Own that we are the single most powerful force in our own lives and make amazing things happen.

Today could be the first day of the most incredible, challenging, inspiring, exciting journey towards your perfect future destiny. What do you want your perfect future to hold?  Name it and claim it!

Thank you as always for reading.

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KindCompassCoach

Joan Senio is the founder of KindCompassCoach. Her career includes 20+ years as a private sector corporate executive and 15 years as a consultant. The common thread through her professional life has been a commitment to compassionate coaching and leadership, including mentoring early and mid-career professionals as well as current and future executives and leaders. KindCompassCoach articles are backed by research and include facts and advice from relevant experts. Joan is a member of the International Organization of Life Coaches, serves as a thought-leader for KuelLife.com and is a regular contributor to PsychReg and Sixty and Me.