The Vision Exercise

Behind my faith and my family, this exercise changed my life more than anything else I've ever done. And it all comes from this book right here. I'm going to hold it up. Jack Canfield's Success Principles. I'm going to talk about the vision exercise in here, and I highly suggest reading this book. The book is amazing. Vision's just one piece. There's 50-some-odd chapters in here that all provide nuggets that can help you to cast a vision for your life that can help you to realize that vision and stop aiming at nothing. I don't know. Look, this video, if you're looking for a highly produced, super beautiful video by a Hollywood influencer that's going to inspire you, this is not it. I'm going to give you a simple process and framework that you can use to cast a vision for your life that's going to help you again to not go wayward, to not live a life that's have somebody else design for you, but to live a life that you can be proud of, and that you have a clear vision and focus on where you're trying to go in all areas of your life, not just money, not just your career, not just that kind of stuff, like all areas. So in this video, I'm going to share why having a vision is important, a simple process for establishing a vision in all areas of your life, and a plan to move forward to get closer to your goals in each of those areas. Again, my name is Matt Vady. So a little bit about me. I grew up relatively poor in upstate New York. When I was 14 years old, my mother passed away. We grew up having, you know, enough, plenty enough, but definitely wanting for a lot. Right. And those that know me, I'll flash up a picture of the first place I ever lived in here on the screen. That'll maybe be the one edit we make to this video after the fact. We'll know that I came from pretty meager beginnings, and I've been very blessed, very fortunate in my life to have worldly success and success in my faith and relationships. And I credit this book along with the Bible with a lot of that success. And so, I want to make sure that I share this with as many humans as possible so that hopefully, it will help. If just one person watches this video and you're able to get a little bit more clarity in the vision for your life and be able to accomplish some things that are meaningful to you and your family, that will bring me great joy and peace. So, I hope that that happens. Why does this matter? Why does having a vision matter? Well, in the book, they talk a lot first and foremost about just the importance of visualization. And they get into some science around, hey, your brain visualizing things is going to make you more likely to achieve them. The more you can clearly visualize, smell, taste, feel success, the more likely you are to achieve those things. And some examples they use are around Olympic athletes. I always like to think about Tiger Woods. I remember years ago reading that every single shot he took on a golf course, he stepped back and he visualized that shot before to clearly understand exactly where he wanted that ball to land, exactly how it was going to strike his club. And then he was able to be more successful with that being part of it, uh, of his routine. And we constantly visualize success for our day. What happens if something goes wrong? What happens if these things go right? What does a successful day look like? And it helps me to create more successful days than off days. And so, for me, this has been a really big improvement in how I operate. And it also helps, there's another section of this book that talks about E R O, event plus response equals outcome. And the reason a vision is so important is because oftentimes people get hung up in this event plus response equals outcome. So, something happens and their response dictates the outcome, but in reality, they blame the event on the outcome, not their response. In reality, we all have the ability to respond positively, to respond, you know, with the hard work, with the necessary intention that it takes to create better outcomes for ourselves. So for me growing up, you know, things that occurred to me, I had negative responses and then I had negative outcomes as a result. And I was very quick to blame other people for those negative outcomes or blame my circumstances. I just— I grew up poor with no you know, no family, no parents to help be in the picture to raise me the way that I should be raised. I didn't come from, you know, with a silver spoon in my mouth. I wasn't born on third, you know, and claiming I hit a home run. And it wasn't until my mid to late 20s until I finally started to take accountability for my life and understand that response was what was dictating the outcomes. I was getting all these negative outcomes because of my responses to what was happening in my life. So let's talk about first and foremost the 7 areas that you want to have a vision for. And I'm going to put, like I said, I'm going to put a very simple Google Doc in the comments that you can use to perform this exercise. And then I'm going to give you some tips on how to do it in a way that's going to set you up for success. More than anything, I also suggest you read the book. This is, uh, chapter 11 in the book, or secret number 11, or whatever it is. And I think that you'll get a ton out of it. There's a whole lot of other things in this book, but this is, this is also part of— I talk about my daily vision to myself every morning when I go through my daily affirmation, which is something that I learned in the book and is critical to me defining myself and who I want to be and who I am so that I act more like that person and I am that person every day when I show up for the people around me. All right. So, the 7 areas you want to focus on when you think about vision, and then we'll talk about how you can visualize, is financial, career, recreation and time, physical fitness and health, relationships with family and friends, personal goals, community service, contribution, and legacy. So, those are 7 buckets that we're going to cast a vision around. And again, there's a simple Google Doc you can make a copy of. In the comments of this video that you can use. And this is not a video that I'm going to go around promoting big time. I'm going to send this to— hopefully I've sent it to you. Uh, if, if I have sent this to you, it means I care about you a lot, and I hope that you have success in all areas of your life, all 7 of those areas. And if I can be, uh, supportive in any of those places, please let me know. So when we think about visualization, we want to really do exactly that. So let's take each one of these areas. And number 1, financial. Close your eyes, really meditate, breathe deep, think about it and visualize it for, you know, 5, 10, 15 minutes. What does it look like? What am I doing with my money? How am I earning my money? Where does that money come from? How much is it? What am I— how am I spending that money? And then that will start to give you a little bit of a blueprint of what you really want, right? And the thing that they really focus on in the book is we also think of— we often think about these incremental improvements, right? I want to be my boss's boss. Well, if you just got rid of everything that you know today in your life as a construct and thought about this more in terms of what do you really want to do, what is that thing? Like, maybe you wanted to be an actor or a lawyer or a doctor when you were a kid, and now you think because I'm 30 years old it's too late. Man, you got a lot of time left if you're 30 years old, dude. There's, you know, God willing, 40, 50, 60 years left, and there's no saying you can't start to make progress towards that thing today. If you're 40, 50, same thing. Like, The amount of things you can accomplish in a 10-year period, I mean, it's incredible. So, don't limit yourself in how you're thinking here, but take the time to close your eyes, get into a comfortable space, and really visualize and do this for each of these 7 things, what success looks like for you. Don't think about what outward success looks like. What would other people think success looks like for me? What does it look like for you? What brings you contentment? What brings you joy? What brings your passions to life? And then spend some time writing that down and go through that for each of these 7 things. So take the time to visualize what success looks like, then write it down and really write, open up. This is sort of the no bad ideas section, right? Like just let it flow, let it be, and then you can cull it down later and make it clearer. We'll talk about what that looks like too, and some really fun ways to to make it clear. So do that for each of the 7 areas. And then once you've done that, now you've started to get a little bit clearer around what are some of the things you want to do. And what I will often do— I used to teach this as a course, um, just not really a course, but like a 1-day session at the local homeless shelter. And because obviously having a vision for your life when you're, you know, whether you, me, if you're watching this, or you're, you're at sort of your lowest of low— there were a lot of people there that had a vision at one point and sort of lost their way. And my goal was to help them get back on their way and really see that vision clearly again. And I hope that this helps for you too. But so once we have each of those 7 areas, and this is going to take a little bit of time, man. Like if you're looking for the quick fix on how to cast a vision for your life and you're looking for just the quick fix to the life you want, That's not how life works. Like, I tell my kids all the time, the only place success comes before work is in the dictionary. It doesn't work that way. And so we need to take a little bit of time. This might take you more than one session. It might be just something you sit down for a couple hours and knock this out. That's what I did. I just got really into it. It's so important to me because I wanted to make sure that I was being true to the vision of my life and I stopped living on other people's terms and what they expected of me. And it's a constant reminder. It's not something that you just do once and then forget about it. Zig Ziglar used to say motivation is like bathing. Like you need it every single day. It's not something that you can get motivated once and it lasts for a month. Like this is something you need to come back to and look at regularly. So as you get clearer with each of these components on vision, that's when you can start to put together a vision board. So this is a visual representation of your vision. So for me, I had, you know, let's just say if I went back up to career, I had pictures of what I wanted our office to look like. I had pictures of, you know, a team working well together and really enjoying each other's company. For community service, I had pictures of, you know, me volunteering at places that I wanted to volunteer at. And I just— or individuals that even just were volunteering at the types of places I want to work at if I wasn't there yet. Have imagery to support this. And so now, and you know, you can do that in whatever order you want after we've got this clear vision. But the next big step for me is to say, all right, now let's look at goal setting and how do I break this down to start making progress towards each one of these things. And, and this, this is the piece I've sort of added outside of the book is, all right, SMART goal setting. What are SMART goals? I think we've got a video on the channel about what SMART goal setting is. I'll recap it specifically— or specifically, of course, that's number one. I'll recap it briefly right here, though. SMART goals: specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and timely. So I, you know, use this example when I would talk to groups about this in the past of maybe your example goal is you want to be a business owner. Well, if I want to make that more specific, I could say I will sell handmade goods through Etsy.com. What makes that measurable? I'll be ready to take my first Etsy order within 4 weeks, and I will aim to sell a minimum of 5 products per week. What makes it achievable? Well, I need to get set up on Etsy first, then I'll build an inventory of 30 products to sell. Finally, I'll promote my business and build customer relationships through word-of-mouth referrals and local networking. What makes this relevant? Well, selling these handmade goods will allow me to benefit financially from my favorite hobby. What makes it timely? My Etsy store will be up and running within 4 weeks, and I have an inventory of 30 cards to sell within 6 weeks. So a SMART goal is something that, you know, is really well defined. And now what I suggest doing is taking each of those 7 areas that you've cast a vision around and create 1 goal for each of those 7 areas. Just one. And, you know, it doesn't have to be the only goal for each of those 7 areas, but it's just, it's an easy one, right? So for example, if my goal for community service is to, uh, spend more time volunteering, okay, well, let's make that specific, measurable, uh, achievable, relevant, and timely. Well, I want to volunteer my time with the youth and serve them in a way that will help to set them up for success. Measurable, I would like to volunteer once a month. Achievable, once a month is achievable for anybody. Any of us can find an hour or two. And look, man, I'm going to hit the pause button real quick here. If you're coming up with the excuse of I just don't have time, that's an excuse is all that is. We all have the same 24 hours in a day. I've got 2 kids. They all play sports, do a bunch of different things. I own multiple companies. I'm happily married. I serve on multiple boards of directors. Like, I make time for the things that are important to me. And that's the life I've created from the vision that I had. This— I'm living the life I wanted because I'm making the time for the things that are important to me. And so, you know, people can criticize how I spend my time all they want, but they didn't cast a vision and they're not the ones living the life that I'm living because they've created this time and this space for themselves to achieve their goals. So take each of those goals, create that SMART goal. Sorry, I'll finish that off. I forgot where I left off on the volunteering thing, but you get the point, right? It gets very simple when I say, hey, I want to volunteer more. I want to be a servant. Well, how do I get into that and into a cause that means something to me? And get into that goal. So now I've got a goal. So one goal for that, all right, start volunteering more. And then what's the first step to achieving that? Well, I'm going to reach out to 3 organizations that serve youth in a way that I want to help and see how I can get plugged in. And it's just that simple, right? So now you're talking in a matter of a couple of hours, you've got an action plan to how to get closer to achieving your vision in all 7 critical areas of your life. And the more you focus on this, the more you will start to see resources align in your life. You know, the— there is very real energy around this that it's just like one of those things when you think about getting a new car and you get looking for a new Subaru and then you start seeing them everywhere. You'll start to see the opportunities align once the vision is clear. And that's the most critical part though, is having that clear vision, because if you have no target, you will hit it every single time. If you made it this far in the video and I can help you in any way, shape, or form, please let me know. Again, this isn't a marketing video for Guru or anything. We're putting it on the Guru channel just because that's where I've got the biggest audience. And hopefully, again, if one person stumbles across this, or if I send this to you and it helps your life, then God bless. I, I'm really grateful that I could do that. I appreciate you tuning in, and I wish you the best. Thank you.