Workbook exercise excerpted from the book:  From Vision to Decision: A Self-Coaching Guide to Starting a New Business.

Deliberate visioning – as opposed to day-dreaming – is a valuable skill.  Major corporations create visions.  As an aspiring business builder, you also need to develop an inspiring and detailed vision of what you want.

I suggest you begin by envisioning what you want for your personal life.  Once you know what you want personally, you will be well equipped to envision a business that will help you get what you want.

Program Your RAS with a Vision

To begin, find a quiet place where you can relax and focus on your personal vision. You will be asked do this visioning process several times as you complete the exercises in this book and here online. For this your first effort, you should just practice the technique. Practice now will improve your results later on.

Step 1: Relax. Relaxation and meditation are useful techniques for finding the proper mental space for your vision. If you do not usually meditate, you can just sit quietly for a few minutes concentrating on your breath. Do this until you feel a sense of inner quiet.

Step 2: Imagine you have accomplished all that you most want out of your life. Do not concern yourself with how possible or impossible this vision seems.

Step 3: Notice your point of view. Are you watching yourself on a screen? Are you the audience for your vision? This, third person point of view is a common point of view.

Step 4: Revisit your vision but this time imagine it is happening right now. “I have a 40-foot sail boat not”.  Not, “I will have a 40-foot sailboat”. Make it as real and present as possible. View it from behind your own eyes. This is the first person, present tense point of view.

This real, present, first person point of view vision is fodder for your RAS. When you are clear about your future reality, your RAS will set to work to find the information you need to create it.

Step 5: Revisit your vision one more time and enhance what you see, feel and smell. You are the director and you want this scene of your desired reality to be big, bold and inspiring. Enhance the color, the sound, the smells. Make you vision as real as you possibly can.

Now Write It Down

You have envisioned your first vision.  I hope you had fun! You will be revisiting this process many times. Have fun with it. Think big. Don’t believe your negative thoughts. Just dream.