I found my life vision.. Actually, I never lost it..

On the fine morning of Monday, December 24th 2018, I took my journal, my planner, my “Goals & Ideas” binder, my pen pouch and sticky notes, and headed to the nearest Starbucks to plan for 2019 and decide on my new goals.
I grabbed my latte, found a quite spot to sit, started writing in my journal and got carried away, until I realized that something magical has happened: In this focus session, and for the first time in my life, I ended up with a full “life vision”.. It was so detailed that I could actually see every aspect of it as if I’m living it!
Here is how it happened.

To understand what happened let me take you a little bit back to 2013-2014, back then I was in a bad place in my life, I was not satisfied with my life, I had no specific ambitions, and struggled to finish my Masters degree, it was years-long rut. You can say I was one of those people who simply ‘existed’ instead of ‘living’. Then one day I decided that it’s about time that I get out of this rut.

I started the first step in my journey by resolving the most pressing issue: It was the last year for my Masters and if I miss it I will be throwing away years worth of work and stress for nothing. I asked myself, what exactly is my problem with the Masters? It was a combination of things like lack of motivation and focus and poor time management, so I started to address the issues one by one, I took to the Internet to find ways to gain better focus and learn some time management skills, it was then when I started my journey discovering productivity and planners and everything that I fell in love with.

After a year of hard work I finally got my Masters but my passion for productivity had just begun, I discovered that this is a passion I had since childhood that I have long forgotten, so I kept following it until I created my Youtube channel “Agenda” where I try to convey to Arab speakers what I learned over the years and how to apply all these tips. Agenda was immediately a hit, and it’s now a major source of fulfillment in my life.

In the same time I took a conscious decision to change my life and get out of this rut. I started taking small steps to make my life better, I dissected my life into areas of focus (family – marriage – career – health – finances – spiritual – development – hobbies and entertainment – environment – giving back, they are very detailed but can be merged into broader categories) and in each area I took baby steps to make it better. Every year since 2014 I’ve been setting yearly goals to make my life better on every level, I didn’t care much about “the vision” because I knew that as long as my life is still  a mess the vision will be distorted, unauthentic and unmotivating.
So, step two, was to appease the chaos and set my life back on track. My only aim back then was to live my life ‘on purpose’. (I think the areas of focus deserves a separate post later)

Step three, finding the vision, is actually the step that comes naturally after that, even if you don’t do it on purpose, just like what happened on the morning of December 24th. When you start to look at your life under the microscope and think thoroughly about how you can make it better, elements of that vision will start to show itself here and there.

The truth is, we all have a vision of our lives and what we want to do with it, but somehow it gets buried under everyday stressors and overwhelming day to day details and material life pressures. However, your mind always remembers it but it keeps it hidden, and only shows you a glimpse of it every now and then in what we call “daydreaming”.. You see, daydreaming is not always a way your mind escapes reality and goes into those crazy places and do crazy things.. Daydreams are our actual life visions but on steroids! Because we keep burying them and they keep fighting to survive! And when you start taking those baby steps on every level, no matter how small they are, eventually you’ll end up remembering the things that you long forgot.

How long does it take? That depends on you pace with the baby steps and how ‘baby’ they actually are, it also depends on your surroundings and environment especially the people you keep in your close circle, and of course it depends on you.
Mind you that the vision is never static and never strict, it might -and will- change over time especially in the beginning, mine still needs a lot of ‘tweaking’ and I know that every time I think it through I will put some final touches here and there, but the core is always the same. The core reflects your values, your believes and what you’re all about, if the core changes then this is not exactly your life vision and you need to think it through again.

I will write a separate blog post about my life vision and 2019 goals later, the point of my post today is to show you the first step of this long walk: If you are completely lost and don’t know what your life vision is maybe you should take a closer look at your life on every level first, dissect your life into areas of focus and start taking baby steps to make every area better, it might take you little longer but it will eventually lead you to the vision, because if you try to put the vision while your life is a mess you risk having something that is not genuinely yours, it will be either set by others’ expectation for you, or a dream where you exaggerate and emphasize on things you don’t necessarily want but they just help you escape your current reality.

I took a conscious decision to get out of the rut and change my life. I had calmed the noise around me to listen closely to the inner workings of my mind and dig deep inside, and found it already there, it has always been there, never went away, never got lost. I just needed to put it on paper.

Now all is left it to execute it.