Developing a vision for your life

The dictionary defines vision as an act or power of anticipating which will or may come to be. Vision gives direction and a glimpse over our life to make our goals and purpose become a reality. In order to understand where we want ourselves to be in life, we must have a clear vision over our life.

I've been spending a lot of time lately trying to develop a meaningful vision.

A light tower that creates clarity for my actions and learning.

It is a strange and uncomfortable place to be in.

There have been a few times in my life where I have had incredibly clear visions for what I wanted my life to be.

Whether it was becoming the typical bodybuilder/personal trainer combo. Or growing my hair long and becoming a surfer (so gnarly dude).

These visions gave me direction and positive feedback as I pursued them leading me to a state of flow I dearly miss.

The importance of having a vision can not be understated and how we must develop one that brings meaning to our life and actions.

Why you should want a vision:

So Im not sure if I really need to sell you on why you should have a vision, but I will anyway.

First and formost is it just feels fucking awesome to be moving towards an idea for your life that inspires you.

You've had this feeling if even being unaware of it.

Being madly in love with someone and dreaming of what your futures may hold.

Starting the fitness kick and thinking about how sick your shoulders and quads are going to look when they are striated and the confidence a healthy and strong body will bring.

Planing out an overseas trip and the wonder of what you will learn or do while over there.

Having a vision is awesome.

It also gives you a pretty good feedback of dopamine which is the neurotransmitter that makes us fell joy and is the cornerstone of our reward system.

So to dig a little bit deeper on that.

When you are making the choices that bring you closer to your goals you will get rewarded with dopamine, when you are not you will feel a slight level of discomfort - like staying up late when you promised you were going to the gym early in the morning, you know this choice will negatively impact the goal you are shooting for so there is a level of unease that comes with that decision.

Meaning that this goal/vision is setting a compass within your psyche that will help to align all actions into actualising your desired outcome.

An important question to ask - " Is this what I want for my life, or what someone else does?"

A large responsibility that is unique to the human experience to decide what to invest our lives into, and what impact we want to have on the world with that life.

This is only the case for humans, a duck does what a duck does because it has thousands of years of programming into it that makes it essentially unconscious - thats why we say animals act on instinct.

It does not sit there and think about the duck that cut it of in the river yesterday and what he will do to get his revenge, or why he flys south every winter to go and mate with the ladies, it just does it without any real thought.

Humans on the other hand ask questions as to why we do what we do - sometimes.

When we do not ask the question of "why?" we are likely to be programmed by our environment which tells us the goals we should pursue.

Whether this is by our parents, teachers or the media, most of what we want we have been told we should want.

Mostly it sounds something like - go to school, go to uni, get a job and work it the next 50 years, get married, build a house, have 2.5 dogs and 2 children, get a motor bike at 50, retire, live out your "golden years" (whatever the fuck that means), Die.

This is the path many will take as it is the one society has told you to live.

Now while we may be told not to follow the sheep, many of us still do and choose not to question the path that society and our cultures lay out for us out of fear of being different.

That stems partly from our hunter gather days as if we did not fit in with the group we would be kicked out and likely die to a saber-toothed tiger.

Fortunately we are not in the caveman times anymore, so you don't need to worry about the tigers (Or do you??) for stepping out from the mainstream belief, especially in the western world.

So what am I saying here?

I am suggesting that it may be worth asking yourself if the path you are walking right now you chose or society did?

It is something I believe is really worth mediating on as I personally have met a shit tone of people who are only doing things to please their parents or friendship groups.

You can question all of this without being offensive to those who have guided you, I'm sure the majority were only teaching you what they thought was best for you or what was taught to them as most peoples intentions are inherently good.

So as you go about building a dream and vision of your own, when the challenging new ideas confront your old ones. Sit and ask where these limiting, shallow or non serving beliefs came from and if they are really yours or one that you chose to adopt so you could stay in the tribe.

What having self selected goals does for our minds:

Now a bit of a change of pace here,

Im going to talk nerdy brain science to you for one moment, it's useful i promise.

There is a process in the brain called the reticular activation system(R.A.S) located in the hypothalamus and brainstem.

Your R.A.S lights up when it sees something that is of use to you. This use to be used so that if we were to see a plant with edible berries on it or had seen a snake in an area before we would notice it as it aided in our survival.

The easiest example I can give for this system working in modern times is when you begin looking for a new car or have just bought a car. All of a sudden those cars are being seen on every single drive and at any red light you stop at.

Those cars were always there, the only difference is that you told yourself that they are important to you so now you see them everywhere.

When you create a vision for how your life you are telling your reticula activation system what is important to you. This brings attention and awareness to your day to day life of the opportunities that were always there, you just didn't notice them before.

A process for building out your own vision:

So how do we build out a vision for our lives?

Well get out a pen and note pad, this is going to take some thought.

1. Write down any and everything that you think you would like to have in your life.

   What does your average day look like?

   How does your body perform? what are your relationship like?

   Is your work bigger than a job and something that adds meaning to your life?

   How is the bank account looking?

   What are the holidays you go on? Did you retire your parents? Did you get the girl/boy?

   These are just some questions for inspiration that can help build out a vision for your life.

2. Now see if you can figure out why it is you want these experiences, if there is no real depth to you why chances are someone else has told you that you should want this. If there is depth great, go make it happen.

   * a great way to gain depth around something is to keep asking the question why, when you come up with an answer that’s shallow, ask why again and then again and see what comes out.

3. Make a double sided list of everything you are currently doing on a day to day basis, one side for the things you enjoy and one side for the things you don't enjoy. See if you can do more of what you enjoy and less of what you don’t - if you can’t right now what would you need to do so you could?

4. Make a second list of everything you would like to be doing on a day to day basis. Then see how you can begin to incorporate this list into your current day to day even if its as simple as getting outside each day.

   • Note - you will likely have to ask if there is anything on your current day to day enjoyment list that is preventing you from achieving the desired day to day life

5. Now build out some anti goals - These are in essence the things you are not willing to give up in the pursuit of your goals. A Lamborghini is cool and all but if your body is too jacked up to even get in the thing, maybe it wasn't worth giving up your health in the pursuit of it.

As much as I would love to give you an easy formula that gives you a 4k image of what you want your life to be and that you now knew exactly what to do with your life. Unfortunately I am just a goofball with a key pad typing symbols onto a screen that are reading.

This process is probably going to be exciting but also uncomfortable and you are going to have moments of great clarity where you know exactly what to do, and parts of your journey are going to be incredibly scary where you don't have any idea what to do.

This is okay and necessary, an adventure is only exciting because we don't know where all the roads will take us and know we likely won’t come back the same person.

I hope this was helpful,

Thank you for reading my letter, more is coming :)

• Ryan