To Reach Your Goals, Start With Vision

I am a strong believer in setting goals and visualizing them. From my own experience, the practical tool of goal-setting combined with the elegant technique of visualization can empower you to expand and grow in your business and your life.

But those two aren't enough... it has to start with visioning.

Goal-setting, visualization and visioning are related, yet substantially different approaches that many people confuse.

Goal-setting is a tool, visualization a technique, and visioning is,

"a process by which we train ourselves to be able to hear, feel, see and catch the Universe's plan for our life or for any particular project we're working on"

~Rev. Dr.  Michael Beckwith

Visioning is key.  And I've found that each step -- from visioning to goal-setting to visualization -- is a crucial element in creating your desired outcome.

Visioning

While visioning may well be the most powerful foundation to any successful creative process, I would also say it's the step that's least taught, talked about, or understood. Visioning is driven by a presence larger than ourselves. Whether you call that presence God, the Universe, or another name, it evokes the understanding that in anything we do we move as part of greater whole and when we listen to our alignment and move in harmony with the whole, miracles occur. When you vision, you become a channel for the creative process in a way that allows you to live your soul's true purpose. 

Visioning is a way of opening yourself to the guidance and abundance of this greater presence and allowing it to work through you from the inside-out. Instead of starting from a mental picture or idea of what you want to see manifest in your life, you get internally still and quiet so that you are able to see and listen to the guidance that comes to you.

This kind of visioning is an internal and intuitive process that requires the willingness to slow down, listen from a place of deep inner connection, and trust what shows up from that place. When you do this, instead of manufacturing a goal or intention from your pre-existing menu of possible outcomes, you can receive a vision much greater and more inspired than anything you could have imagined on your own.

Goal-Setting

Setting goals involves making a list of measurable outcomes you want to accomplish within a certain time period, usually in a linear and focused way. It is a powerful tool that stresses the active, doing element of the creative process. Once you know the outcome you want, you are able to take specific actions toward achieving it.

Even though goal-setting is something we're rarely taught or encouraged to do, there's empirical evidence that backs up the effectiveness of this tool. And, as with any tool, how we use it determines how effective it can be.

A study at Dominican University demonstrated that people who not only set goals, but wrote their goals down accomplished significantly more than those who just thought about their goals. Taking it a step further, those who both took committed action and had accountability to a friend or mentor around their goals and action steps accomplished still more than any of the other groups.

The statistics make a very strong case for getting good at setting goals and making it a regular practice!

Visualization

Visualization is a technique for mentally rehearsing and creating what you want to have happen, as if it were already so. It is a proven technique that is used to train Olympic athletes, chess champions, and peak performers across a wide variety of fields. However, similarly to goal-setting and visioning, very few of us have ever been taught how to use it effectively.

The reason visualization is so effective is that it harnesses the power of your subconscious mind by placing you in the sensory and emotional experiences of your goals, where you are more capable of generating the mindset and feelings associated with already being there.

In contrast to visioning, which works from the inside-out, visualization operates from the outside-in. We start with a clear and solid picture of the goal we want to achieve, and then focus on that external image to create a clear, detailed inner sense of what it would be like to have what we desire.

Research has shown that imagining yourself already living your goals helps you to manifest them in reality. In fact, studies have demonstrated this to be so effective that people who only imagined themselves performing a task improved their performance in that task without additional physical practice. Guang Yue, an Exercise Psychologist at Cleveland Clinic Foundation in Ohio, found that people who did a virtual workout through mental visualization over the course of 3 months actually increased their muscle strength by 13.5%.

Putting It Into Practice

Now that we've established a basic understanding of visioning, goal-setting, and visualization, you can see why each step is so important to creating a life of success and financial prosperity that also brings you JOY because it's in alignment with your true purpose! The next phase is to implement each of these steps in your own life and creative process so that you can directly experience the results for yourself.

In my next blog I'll be sharing some of my best time-tested and proven practices for doing just that, so stay tuned.

xo,

Rita