What is your vision for your life over the next 5, 10, 15, or even 50 years?  We must live in the moment and enjoy what we have but that certainly doesn’t mean we can have a far ranging outlook deep into the future.  Successful career coaching and mentoring always includes a far ranging vision in addition to methods for handling your near term necessities.  For example the Five O’clock Club uses a 40-year vision plan as part of your career transformation process.

A vision plan is important because it is the map of your journey.  Every journey has two things in common, a beginning and an end point. It may sound like common sense but so many of us have no direction and no focus.  We must literally take the time to determine where we are in life. 

• Where are you in your career? 
• Where are you spiritually? 
• Where are you financially?
• Where are you emotionally? 
• Where are you in terms of your relationships with family and friends?

Keep asking yourself these types of questions about the key areas of your life.  Your direction is determined by the quality of the questions and the content of the answers.  The answers will define what needs to change.  Your response will determine what will change. 

The next step is to be very precise about what you want.  You wanting to become a millionaire is not precise.  You wanting to become a millionaire because you have determined that amount or more will allow you to pay off debt, send your children to college, invest in your faith and community, and start the business you have planned for is precise.  It has emotional impact and forms the basis to drive forward. 

Vague goals generally don’t work and get you nowhere. The more general they are, the less power they have. But the more specific they are, the more sway and authority they have in your life. 

Define your goal in terms of the positive or desired outcome not the problem at hand.  As per the Merriam-Webster dictionary a promise is a reason to expect; especially: ground for expectation of success, improvement, or excellence <shows considerable promise>. 

Compare this to a problem, which is a source of perplexity, distress, or vexation.  Therefore the question is should we focus on the promise or the problem?  I chose the promise because if you focus on disease you get sick but if you focus on good health the likely hood of better health dramatically increases.  You can focus on previous bad relationships or you can focus on the good one you are in (or to come).  Either way whatever we focus on we move toward.  Move toward the promise and put distance between yourself and the problem. 

An excellent biblical representation of this is in Genesis chapter 24:7 “The LORD, the God of heaven, who brought me out of my father’s household and my native land and who spoke to me and promised me on oath, saying, ‘To your offspring [a] I will give this land’-he will send his angel before you so that you can get a wife for my son from there.”  This was the promise. 

12 Then he prayed, “O LORD, God of my master Abraham, give me success today, and show kindness to my master Abraham. 13 See, I am standing beside this spring, and the daughters of the townspeople are coming out to draw water. 14 May it be that when I say to a girl, ‘Please let down your jar that I may have a drink,’ and she says, ‘Drink, and I’ll water your camels too’-let her be the one you have chosen for your servant Isaac. By this I will know that you have shown kindness to my master.”  This was his plan. 

15 “Before he had finished praying, Rebekah came out with her jar on her shoulder. She was the daughter of Bethuel son of Milcah, who was the wife of Abraham’s brother Nahor.”  The promise fulfilled.

These verses are excerpt from the story of Isaac and Rebekah in Genesis chapter 24 and it contains all of the elements of focusing on the promise, a compelling goal, successful planning and fruition.  It is a lesson worth remembering.