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Finding Ourselves

Creating an Inspiring Vision of Your Life

What is your "vision" for your life? (Your long-term plan, your "ideal" for how your life will turn out, or the legacy you'll leave behind). Most of us don't have a clue beyond "getting married" or "having kids" or getting "divorced" or maybe having a successful career. Each of these is a goal , but not much of a vision .

Constructing a vision demands asking the big questions about our lives-not so much what we want to do, but rather who we want to be; our values, our character and integrity, our life purpose, our impact on others, our final legacy.

Our core values - such as making money or helping others, achieving fame or growing in wisdom, -- will play a major role in contributing toward our vision . The most important factor in creating our vision, however, is identifying our ultimate purpose, and the special gifts God has given us to help achieve that purpose.

For a mother, the process of creating a vision for her life might look something like this:

One of my core values is to share God's love by helping others. I have the gifts of encouragement and understanding (empathy) as well as patience. My purpose is to make a difference in the world, i.e., with the people around me. My vision is to be an inspiring, loving mother and teacher to my children, and to combine my values and gifts to achieve my purpose by making a difference -- not just as a mother and teacher, but as someone recognized as a source of love, mentoring, inspiration and encouragement to all whom I meet.

If you have consciously chosen values that support employing your gifts on behalf of your life purpose, you have the basic building blocks in place to develop your vision. Since your vision represents how you want your future to be , it should reflect the logical end result of using your "gift" to pursue your purpose in relationship with your core values.