Writing Your Vision - Doug’s One Year Vision Statement

By dougnau on Apr 7, 2008 in Consciousness, Tools

Foreword: If you have not read my article on developing your personal vision and you are not familiar with the vision statement writing process, you may want to begin by reading the article Developing the Vision first, or listening to "podcast #2 Develping your Vision" which thoroughly explains the topic. If you are already familiar with the vision writing process, then this article provides a fantastic and real life example of how one is written. It also provides a full disclosure of my personal vision. I hope you’ll find this useful!

Quick Vacation Update

Today is Day #2 in Nueva Vallarta - so far we are having a fantastic vacation. The baby is down for her afternoon nap, mom is on a beach walk and its my daily chance to collect many of the thoughts that I’ve had since starting this personal development and life coaching website.

Last night, I began re-reading a book that I read a number of years ago and had quite literally forgotten that I had read it. In fact its a coaching book by Tom Gegax called Winning the Game of Life. While reading last night I experienced one of those moments where everything just ‘came together’. Tom is living in what he calls a ’self coached life’, he had also experienced cancer, and one of the people that wrote a short testimonial for the book was even a colleague of mine I began working with long after buying the book. It led me to have a number of thoughts, the strongest of which was a message that after so many life changes of my own these past 5 years, all is well aligned in the world.

Tom Gegax begins his book starting with an introduction to writing your personal mission statement. You’ve probably listened to my podcast or seen my writings about your personal vision statement if you’ve browsed this website before. The vision and mission are clearly different, and after reading Tom’s first chapter I am inspired to create my own post on writing out your mission statement in the near future. Regardless, while I was reading the introductory chapter it dawned on me that providing a real life example of my one and five year vision statement could be very beneficial for my readers looking for ideas on how to best write one for themselves. Below you’ll find the 1 year vision statement I wrote January 1, 2008. A related blog article on the 5 year vision is also offered in a separate listing.

Doug’s One Year Vision Statement

Vision: January 1, 2009

Another year passes, and as always, so many wonderful things have happened. Chanelle is now more than a year and a half old. She’s so amazing – a beautiful little girl running around and bringing so much joy to our house. The big news is that she’s expecting a little baby sibling in the upcoming months. She’s excited, mom and dad are excited and we’re all set with another baby room. All tests show the baby is strong and healthy – we’re truly blessed!

The year went by quickly, but so much has happened that its not hard to imagine. My health continues to be fantastic. All PCR tests have come back negative – the gleevec is really a godsend – hard to believe that it was 5 years ago now since the diagnosis. I continue working out typically 5x/week – and its been great to find a routine in which I’ve got strength training in 2x/week regularly now. I had a chance to compete in another endurance event this year and it was a blast! I feel as strong and healthy as ever (and with the kids, what a fantastic motivation to keep it that way!). My wife is doing very well also, this second pregnancy has been good for her and cutting back to four days/week has really helped her throughout the year.

Early in 2008 I kicked off my new coaching and personal growth website ‘i-grow.net’ and in January I began getting consistent pay per click revenue. It was just a few dollars at the start, but it proved the business model. I’ve been adding content to the site at the rate of 2 pages per week, and also optimizing the website throughout the year to bring in search results and its been absolutely fantastic to see the hits grow, both to my site and to the adsense advertisements! I’ve received numerous $100 payments now and its really beginning to generate revenue - exciting. I see the clicks come in daily now! So far I’ve got over 100 blog entries and the richness of the content continues to grow. I’ve also been playing with the coachforwellness website in my free time and it continues to rank in the top 10 on google for ‘wellness coach’. There are some interesting opportunities here in the future.

i-grow.net has been a transition from the previous years ‘coaching’ business. In January I finished working with all individuals. That made a lot of sense as I was relatively inflexible with the coaching work and the potential with what I could do was limited on a coaching/consulting basis. Sutter’s been fantastic, and I don’t see that I’ll be scaling back that work as the opportunities are pretty amazing. This year I began on a wellness committee, have become the facilitator for this group, I have become the face of the Sutter wellness movement and we’re starting to see a real corporate culture of wellness arise throughout SHSS – its all very exciting. I am still coaching, working 32 hours per week but I’ve got my hands in many other projects and I see the position evolving without doubt. Furthermore, I had a significant pay increase this year. There are fantastic opportunities for expansion with this group as I have a very unique background and degree, and I’ve been very active and involved in its growth and development. I made a concerted effort in 2008 to increase my income and by growing with this group I have done so as planned. I see change in the future which will make my revenue increase and I will have even a greater impact on the community.

I continue to grow and educate myself. Listening to audio cd’s in the car (still driving the mustang) has been a terrific way to do this, and I’ve completed both my Nutrition and Wellness Consultant Certification as well as my Weight Management Consultant Certification through the AFPA – both great courses. I am now enrolled and participating in a stress management certification, which I am finding very interesting. Though I’ve not focused on building my own private business, it has become very clear what the coaching will look like should I ever choose to do so.

i-grow.net has given me an opportunity to express myself through writing. Now that I have gone through the process I’ve got lots of material that could go into a personal development book. This would be a possibility to work on in 2009 – however i-grow.net is starting to take off and I am definitely motivated to continue working on this. The technology and concept are interesting. My niche that I have carved out is ‘Lifestyle Change’. All my studies have been learning how to empower people to make lifestyle change - a very interesting topic. Sutter’s been paying for my education so that is very cool!

Financially things are going very well – better than ever before. We have met a few very impressive milestones this year which I am proud to discuss. Firstly we paid off our HELOC. We owe nothing on this now, a good 4 years ahead of plan! Starting the year we owed a significant amount, so it was a pretty aggressive plan to pay this off. We did this while continuing to contribute steadily to our stock funds and both of us now putting money into retirement accounts. Our total net worth has surpassed the milestone which we have set out for this years goals which has been awesome, and our personal account has eclipsed this year’s expectations. We celebrated each of these events with a dinner that was thoroughly enjoyed! We also have continued to contribute to Chanelle’s college fund and its growing nicely.

I’ve begun educating myself more on real estate. We have not purchased anything yet as the market is still a bit uncertain – but we definitely have not missed the window of opportunity. I suspect we’ll buy our first rental property in 2009. That may have an impact on our million dollar ten year plan – well at least it might change how we get there, but having all our money in the stock market might not be the best way to get there anyway. I am learning about real estate and maybe this is a better way to do it – my eyes and ears are always open. 2008 was a year to focus on wealth as I have had the opportunity to revisit career and life direction in the previous two years. I’ve aligned who I am with what I do and am so pleased to monetize this appropriately now! I see incredible potential and have begun to bring that in over 2008.

Early in the year we took a fantastic trip to Mexico. This was my only true ‘vacation’ that I took this year. We had a awesome time, relaxing, doing some sightseeing and just soaking in the sun with Chanelle. I’ve taken other days off for business development which has been nice breaks, and I am planning on another holiday vacation in the near future maybe 6 months after the baby is born, having 2-3 weeks off this year would be fantastic!

Our yard is beautiful. Everything continues to grow and get larger. Our fruit trees produced like crazy in 2008 as did our vegetable garden and all of our palms really kicked in. The winter was relatively mild and didn’t set us back at all which was great, we’re just really loving having the yard that we created. Indoors has been some smaller projects as well. We bought a few accessories for the bedroom to complete the furniture work last year, we’ve done a small project getting the baby room together and we also had a small project putting together the play area near the treadmill. Not a huge investment this year, but things still progress and we love the house.

2008 was amazing and we look forward to 2009. Our family grows and we consider ourselves blessed every day.

I hope this has brought clarity to the vision writing process. As a side note - the only modifications that I have made are regarding the specific financial goals. As you’ll note, I’ve left them rather vague which is in actuality very specific in my real vision statement. I value full disclosure - however value some appropriate privacy as well :O). See the related article - Writing your Vision - Doug’s 5 year Vision Statement. Until next time, Adios!

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