One thing I’ve always been amazed by is the power of visions statements in my personal life. With no forethought other than a desire to gain some clarity in my own life, in 2006 I wrote my first vision statement. It was simply a day in my perfect life from the time I woke up to the time I went to bed. The exciting and surprising part is that in general terms, my life ended up matching that visions statement pretty good after about a year.

I didn’t set out to have that happen nor did I think of my future, I really was just curious how I would choose to live my life, if I could live it any way I wanted.

So, after seeing the power of vision statements, like a good American 🙂 I started exploiting them. Why not? Since 2006 I’ve written a few, and my most recent one in 2014 was extremely powerful because it prompted personal and professional changes that would take quite some time to see the fruits of.

Creating a vision statement is one of the most powerful steps you can take toward the fulfillment of your purpose and achievement of your goals. In fact, it’s the bridge that connects the two. – Proctor Gallagher Institute

If having a personal vision statement is that powerful, then shouldn’t we all have a vision statement about our businesses, and how we want to relate with them? I’m not talking about simply saying “I want to make a lot of money,” I mean something much more woo woo, like “I want to wake up and be excited about going to work, and when I get there, I want a steady stream of customers filing through after lunch.” Hopefully you get the idea.

3 Steps to Creating a Vision Statement:

1) Relax

Don’t worry about knowing your purpose, and especially, the most hardest thing to do is remember that this is your dream, so financial concerns don’t matter! This is my most difficult problem.

2) Write it down

Magic happens when pen hits paper. It makes your statement come alive. Literally just write down your day from the time you get up to the time you go to sleep. The outcome of this free form process will be insightful – what if nowhere do you ever go to work? Maybe something needs to change there? This vision is your dream, what you hope your day would be like if you could choose anything, like if you had a genie in a bottle.

3) Share with your peeps

This can be hard, but hopefully you have some people close to you that you are comfortable sharing your vision statement with. I shared mine with my wife. This makes it to where whenever I’m stressed out, or going in a negative direction, she helps remind me that that’s not the life I was hoping to lead, and I need to get on track.

Now that you have a decent idea of how you want to live your life, hopefully it includes your business! This is a good opportunity for you to focus on creating a vision statement solely for your business – how do you see it looking in 1 year? 3 years? 5 years?

Specifically looking forward in these year increments is an obvious way to create goals that are achievable. Don’t worry about what you think is reality, just create the vision and go!

Danny McEnerney is a Partner at The RockFish Group, in charge of Creative Operations. He has almost 20 years experience in web & graphic design, all with a thirst to excite marketing opportunities.