Welcome to Tony Richards Messages

27 Writing A Vision Statement Pt4

Welcome to this week’s message on leadership, self-confidence, and how to feel good about yourself everyday as you interact with people, in safety and comfort, at home and work.

Last week’s message was about Critical Step 2. Celebrate Your Achievements.
If you wish to be reminded of that message, it is also available back on the message page.

This week’s message is about Critical Step 3. Writing a Vision Statement.
Your Vision Statement will be reflective of who you are and where you’re going. It is imperative in providing you certainty and direction in decision-making, and will also help you understand why you’re making decisions, and where they’re taking you. This is the Critical Step that links the first three Steps together, to ensure you never lose sight of your real value as an individual, and also displays that value to everyone else you come into contact with.

It is important to start off with WHAT is a Vision Statement and then WHY you should have one.
A Vision Statement can be called an Epilogue, a Mission Statement, a Personal Commitment, a Creed, a Resolution or a Positive Affirmation, which is a modern slant on a type of Vision Statement. You may be more familiar with one of these than you think.

Have you ever been in someone’s home and noticed on his or her wall (you may have one of your own) an excerpt from a Holy book, a quotation from an ancient philosopher, or (my favourites) from Shakespeare or a poet. (I also have a weakness for the quotation on the desk calendar each day.) These quotations from other people can give positive reinforcement to how you see, or want to see, the world and your place in it.

So having given an explanation as to WHAT a Vision Statement is, it becomes necessary to provide an explanation as to WHY that Statement is an imperative part of your path to certainty, leadership and the self-confidence that makes you feel good about yourself every day.

If these works from others can have such a positive effect on your life, or of other people who read them, can you imagine the clarity provided of having written something that powerful of your own? Something that you know reflects clearly who you are, how you want the world to relate to you, how you want to interact with everyone in your world, and at the same time provides direction and certainty in all of your decision making.

Remember a Vision, or Mission, Statement can also be written to reflect where your business or company wants to head. How it wants to relate to customers, clients, contractors and employees, and show all of those interacting with your business how important they are to you.
It can be used to demonstrate who the real leaders are in your company and who is most appropriate to promote and to supervise others. Real leaders are not afraid to display who they are, through their Vision Statements, and are prepared to live by their commitments to you and themselves in that Statement.

The positive energy a Vision Statement provides is easier to understand when you compare it with something personal and important that you carry, or have displayed on your desk or wall, such as a photograph of a loved one.

The rhetorical question is to consider why you or anyone else would have any such photograph.
You know quite well what the subjects in the photos look like. You may have kissed them as you went to work this morning, or woken up beside them. (Even my poor memory usually lasts a few hours!)

The broad answer to the question above is that you are taking an intangible thought, or memory, and transferring it to something tangible that you can see and touch.

By making it tangible you are bringing real currency to the thought or memory. It becomes more real. The more real anything is, the closer you feel towards it. Your Vision Statement will be exclusively yours, like the photos you have, and it will provide direction and certainty in everything you do. It will provide the leadership that others will recognise you by.

Your personal Statement gives your employer a tangible view of your value to them. It is often used as their window to your reliability and certainty when promotional opportunities arise.

Of course it is not that easy to write a Vision Statement, and in a few weeks time I will provide a weekly message that explains HOW to find the Principles that you personally are most committed to, and that will assist you to write your Statement.

Because we are all unique, we all have different principles that we feel most relevant to our lives, and a Vision Statement must reflect the Principles that we, individually, can and want, to commit to.

In the meantime you can see a parcel of selected Statements if you go to the tab above that says ‘Free Book Download’, then go to chapter 8, page 7, and you will see Vision Statements from passed clients who were kind enough to let me publish theirs in my book. My own Statement is on page 13 of that chapter.

Use those Statements to process ideas for your own, which you may have a go at writing. Contact me personally if you require assistance with it before the HOW message arrives in some week’s time.

Please take the opportunity this week to think about your Vision Statement and how it must become an imperative part of reminding yourself of your value as its words provide direction for personal or business decisions and interactions with others. We would all love to hear about any Statement, historical quotation, or positive affirmations you have used to maintain certainty, or direction, in guiding your everyday actions.

Your stories – even short comments – are of great value to inspire others, and I would like to take the opportunity to include your stories, or comments, in upcoming episodes of ‘Special Interest Items’. They will be included as they fit into the theme of the message for that week.

Do you know anyone you can help with leadership issues, or just feeling good about themselves? Forward this message to friends and work colleagues; print it out and place it on notice boards, and give copies to those without computer access. Printing out, and compiling each weekly message in a folder, is a good way to build a total knowledge of self-confidence and leadership. It will provide certainty in dealing with every aspect of your life.

Next week’s message will be about Critical Step 4 Setting Goals. You will feel the benefits of taking small but positive steps that reinforce your focus on how important YOU are. You will also come to understand why setting goals is the 4th Critical Step, not the 1st, 2nd or 3rd. It will be followed in coming weeks by Critical Step 5 and a message of Special Interest.

Until then, please continue to see yourself as a unique and remarkable person, who deserves to feel good about yourself every day.

Tony Richards.

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