Developing Yourself:

Achievement Management

Creating a Grand Vision

A Powerful Focus In Your Life

"Your vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil." – James Allen

"Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves."  – Parker, Dorothy

Two Main Functions of Your Vision

Your vision performs both a directional and a motivational function. The purpose of your coherent vision of a desirable future is to focus you on those things you could do now to bring that future state about.

Becoming a Motivational Leader

To become a motivational leader, you start with motivating yourself. You motivate yourself with a big vision, and as you move progressively toward its realization, you motivate and enthuse others to work with you to fulfill that vision... More

Your Personal Mission Statement and Strategic Vision

You should be able to know who you are, what you do and what your vision for your life is. Having your own Mission Statement and Strategic Vision that is written down gives you a powerful focus in your life.⁹

Your personal Mission Statement helps you understand why you exist.  With this knowledge you are able to succeed because you know what you do and concentrate on that focus. You also can easily explain your goals to other people.

With knowledge of why you exist, you are also more able to create a strong strategic vision which allows you to know where you are going and what your goals are.

When you create your Mission Statement and Strategic Vision, don't make them sound like they could be statements for anyone. They should sound like you.

Top 10 Essential Requirements To Be A Great Strategic Thinker

Essential Element #1: You must have a vision. And you must be great at thinking with a strategic purpose and creating a visioning process. Great strategic thinkers are visionaries... More

Stretch

Make sure you keep stretch in your vision. Your goals must be stretching, but achievable.

Cherish Your Vision

"The dreamers are the saviours of the world," wrote James Allen.⁸ "As the visible world is sustained by the invisible, so men, through all their trials and sins and sordid vocations, are nourished by the beautiful visions of their solitary dreamers. Humanity cannot forget its dreamers; it cannot let their ideals fade and die; it lives in them; it knows them as the realities which it shall one day see and know.

Composer, sculptor, painter, poet, prophet, sage, these are the makers of the after-world, the architects of heaven. The world is beautiful because they have lived; without them, labouring humanity would perish.

He who cherishes a beautiful vision, a lofty ideal in his heart, will one day realize it.

• Columbus cherished a vision of another world, and he discovered it;

• Copernicus fostered the vision of a multiplicity of worlds and a wider universe, and he revealed it;

• Buddha beheld the vision of a spiritual world of stainless beauty and perfect peace, and he entered into it.

Cherish your visions; cherish your ideals; cherish the music that stirs in your heart, the beauty that forms in your mind, the loveliness that drapes your purest thoughts, for out of them will grow all delightful conditions, all, heavenly environment; of these, if you but remain true to them, your world will at last be built."

Combine Vision and Strategy

Vision and strategy are both required for success in daily life as well, as illustrated in a study conducted by James Pennebaker at Southern Methodist University.¹⁰ He identified three kinds of people:

1. “high-level thinkers” who consistently focused on important issues of vision – their lives, identities, expectations for the future, and so on

2. “low-level thinkers” who consistently focused on mundane concerns and daily obligations, and

3. “flexible thinkers” who engaged in both high-level and low-level thinking. Flexible thinkers were found to have the best physical health and the lowest rates drug and alcohol use. Success and good health result from both high-level thinking about issues of vision, as well as more detailed, lower-level planning about how to achieve that vision... More

The Four Skills of an Effective Competitor

Excerpts from the "The Art of War", Sun Tzu, app. 500 BC

• Vision: the ability to foresee the future... More

Bibliography:

1. "NLP Solutions", Sue Knight

2. "Ways of NLP", Joseph O'Connor and Ian McDermott

3. "NLP Technology", Harry Adler

4. "NLP - the New Technology of Achievement", Steve Andreas and Charles Faulkner

5. "Is Your Self-portrait a Little Fuzzy?", ThinkTQ.com

6. "Effective Coaching," Myles Downey

7. James Allen eMeditation

8. "As a Man Thinketh," James Allen

9. "Stop, Drop & Re-Balance: A Self-Renewal Manual," Paul Frazer

10. "Combine Life Vision & Life Strategy," Stephen Kraus