Developing a Vision for Your Life

Do you struggle to design and carry out a vision for your life? Do you find yourself living day to day without a plan and feeling like you’ve lost your focus?

Read on to discover some inspiring tips on how to develop a vision for your future:

1. Allow some time in your schedule to do nothing but reflect on your life. Having time to ponder how far you’ve come and where you’re headed is integral to proceeding to develop your life vision.
   

2. Open your mind. Surveying your life so far might be a rather daunting process. You have to acknowledge fully what’s happened to you and determine whether you’re on the track you want to be on at this time.

3. This process might be a challenge, but the end result could produce one amazing life that’s tailor-made for you.

4. Feel free to jot down some notes. Think about what you’ve accomplished thus far in your journey. What goals have you established? Write them out. Doing so will cultivate more thoughts of what you’ve experienced in life and why. Are you still working toward those goals? Why or why not?

5. Be honest with yourself about any choices you’ve made that were diversions. When did you make a choice that prevented you from continuing with your plans at the time?

6. Looking back now, what do you see as your biggest mistakes?

7. Did some of those choices turn out to be wise? Why? Did they lead you down a path that you now see as more in tune with what you really want?

8. Set goals now. Make a new list of your current goals and wishes for the future.

9. Maybe you want a promotion at work. What has to happen in order for it to occur? Create the mini-goals necessary to help you meet your main goal of getting that promotion. Leave nothing out. For example, if you need to complete two college classes, include those as goals.

10. Check off each smaller goal you accomplish as you work toward the larger, overall goal. It will feel great when you do.

11. Post your life aspirations where you can see them. Put them on your mirror, refrigerator, Smartphone, electronic pad, and bulletin board. Put a copy by your favorite chair in the living room where you can re-read them often. In short, ensure your vision is right in front of you much of the time.
    

12. Create a vision board. Use photos from magazines and write inspiring words related to the photos you choose to place on your board. Your vision board is a graphic reminder of what you’re working toward every day.

13. Decide whether you’re living in “the right place.” Does your current home location meet your employment, personal, and financial needs? Is it possible to achieve your goals there? If not, consider your options.

14. Are you willing to move away? If so, include on your goal list everything you must do to get ready to move.

15. Make your life vision a priority. In order to live out the vision you’ve developed, you must keep your vision at the top of your priorities. When making decisions in the future, consider options that will support your life vision.

Developing your life vision will take time, reflection, and work, but the rewards will be great. Your life will be filled with passion and optimism once you develop your vision. Why wait? Start creating your vision today!

Want to be Wealthy? Stop Swapping Your Time for Money

Many of us were taught to do well in school, get a great job, work hard, and you’ll eventually make a lot of money. This may be true, but there is a great limitation to working for someone else. Time. There are only so many hours in a week. No one can buy or create more.

Even doctors suffer from this limitation. The average physician makes a large salary, but there aren’t many that make a million dollars a year. Even a physician is swapping his time for money. He only gets paid while he’s seeing patients. He can’t see more than one at a time and he can’t see them while he’s asleep. The clock ultimately limits his income.

This is also true for consultants, dentists, lawyers, and CEOs.

If you want the opportunity to make a tremendous amount of money, it’s important to find ways to earn without your presence being necessary. Free yourself from the clock and your ability to earn is unlimited.

There are better ways:

1. Get paid more than once for the same work. Think about artists, authors, and musicians. In their respective businesses, they’re able to get paid repeatedly for the same work.

2. An author can write a book and then sell a million copies over the next 10 years. During that time, she may have written 20 more books. What could be better than getting paid multiple times for the same work?

3. What are some other businesses that can utilize this same strategy?

4. Do something that allows you to receive recurring payments. Leasing office space or other real estate to others keeps money coming in while you do other things. Building a website and leasing it is a similar strategy.
   

5. Be an investor. The great thing about stocks, bonds, mutual funds, and similar investments is the ability to make money with little work on your part. You’re essentially making money while you sleep. You could also loan money to others.
   

6. Outsource / arbitrage. Many people set up businesses and then outsource all the work. This is especially true online. For example, there are people that sell website building services. These same people then hire someone else at a reduced rate to do all the work.

7. Ghostwriters write many of the e-books sold on sites like Amazon.com. The listed author paid someone else to write the book. If you can successfully buy something for $X and sell it for $X+Y, you can potentially make money with little work.

8. Can you think of ways to make money from the work of others?

9. Create passive income. A website that sells an affiliate product can make money while you sleep and is a form of passive income. It’s not difficult to build a website that makes a mere $5/day, but keep in mind that’s over $1,800/yr.

10. Make a list of other ways you can make money passively.

Time is limitation for all of us. So far, no one has lived forever. But time doesn’t have to limit your income.Doctors, lawyers, and CEOs are paid well, but you have even great financial potential if you can break free from swapping your time for money.

Uncertainty stops many people. If you write a book or create a website, you’re not guaranteed to make any money at all. If you go to your job, you can expect to get paid on a regular basis. Courage and persistence are required.

Get started today and build an income stream that isn’t dependent on your time or presence. You’ll enjoy getting paid while you’re not at work!

What Is The Meaning of Life? A Guide to Discovering Your Purpose

The meaning of life is one of those sought after quests that can never truly be answered. There are just too many opinions and personal definitions for any one meaning to be true for everyone.

Also, there are certain topics in life that can simply never be fully described with mere words, such as true love and true self.

Some will say that discovering the meaning behind true love and your true self is the meaning of life. What do you think?

Discovering Your Purpose

While you might feel a bit confused, you can start to find meaning in your life by discovering your true purpose. For some, this comes easily but for others it may take some deep soul searching. Your true purpose is not necessarily a job or something concrete, although it could be. There are no rules to follow, just the rules set out by your heart.

Try some of the following activities when searching for your true purpose:

1. Brainstorm. Find a time and place where you can have some quiet self-reflection. Just start writing down ideas on what you think your true purpose might be. You may not arrive at it at first, but you’ll eventually come across something that hits the nail on the head.

2. Activities and hobbies. Reflect on your favorite activities and hobbies. Can you turn any of them into a life’s purpose? Some people feel that if they take their hobbies further it’ll start to feel like any old job. This won’t be the case if you’ve truly found your purpose.

3. Skills and intelligence. If there are certain skills and abilities that you’re good at, perhaps you should try pursuing those, even if you didn’t think you wanted to before.

4. Also, you might want to look into a theory called Multiple Intelligences by Howard Gardner. Gardner describes how everyone has a type of intelligence and it might not always be what is typically accepted as intelligence, such as a high IQ.

5. Happiness. Ask yourself whether or not you’re happy in your current life situation. If you are, perhaps you’ve already found your life’s purpose or you’re on the correct path to it. If you’re unhappy, see if you can isolate the reasons why. Once you know why, you can take action to correct the imbalance.

6. Regrets. Make an effort to let go of your regrets. These never serve a positive purpose in your life. However, if you identify your regrets, perhaps you can use them to help you discover your purpose. Perhaps there’s something you regret that you can correct. Often times, it’s not too late to make a positive change!

7. For example, if you’re in your 50s and you always wanted to go to college, you shouldn’t let anything stand in the way between you and your dream.

8. Religion. If you’re a religious person, it’s likely that your religion discusses life and meaning. Search through religious books or seek out a spiritual advisor to learn more about the meaning of life.

Follow Your Bliss

To put it quite simply, if you’re following your bliss, you’re on the road to discovering your true purpose. You’ll also be discovering your personal definition for the meaning of life.

Remember, you’ll always have outside influences when it comes to finding life’s meaning, but following your heart is the only true answer.