Be spontaneous, some planning and future projecting is nothing, I often hear from people whose spontaneity mostly lies in a random visit to the local pub, which they spontaneously decided on from being depressed at home.

No, having a vision in life is not nonsense, nor any insane idea out of an Amway or Herbalife presentation, god forbid something you should prepare an answer for a job interview at twenty, and between us, human resource professionals who ask you where you see yourself in five years at twenty, and then critically evaluate it, should probably visit the closest mental institute.

Of course, almost no one has an idea of where they want to be heading at twenty, and if they do, it probably derives from a good family background, on the other hand, many people don’t have any idea even at fifty, and that’s something to reflect on.

Why should you have an idea?

Firstly, because your brain has something like the Reticular Activating System (RAS). What? What the hell am I talking about, what kind of expert terms am I blurting out here. So again, very simply, you are able to see what you focus on. When you begin to focus on red cars, you start seeing red cars everywhere, it’s as simple as that, you begin to filter the sensations you focus on.

If you have a vision, you are basically setting up this filter, you want a house, a pool, a family, you suddenly start seeing it all around you, you begin to perceive how it works, how others do it, and what it takes to achieve it, you start to notice it.

But, but! Surely, I won’t plan, what if a car hits me tomorrow? I hear it already, and that’s exactly what I had always heard around me, and I also always thought, and I didn’t have the answer then, but I do now. And what if the car doesn’t hit you tomorrow? And the chance that the car doesn’t hit you tomorrow is damn high.

Imagine it like this, most people want to go the sea, but they think in the following way – what if just when I get to the sea it will be raining, what if my car breaks down on the way, what if I fall sick. And so they start acting spontaneously, they just drive straight to the crossroads, and the road goes straight ahead, left, right, they look where the sun comes from, and they turn like that at each crossroads, and when the sun goes down behind a cloud, they return back the way they came.

Am I exaggerating? That’s exactly how you function in life when you don’t have a vision. Just because the car may break down on the way to Croatia doesn’t mean you will travel completely without a map and decide at each crossroads where to go, depending on the current view of the sun! Yes, a problem may occur, you may change your plans in the future, something may interfere with these plans, and it is well known that plans often don’t work out, but that doesn’t say anything about not ought to have an idea!

How do you form such a vision?

Typically, every vision revolves around three things – relationships, health, finance. It’s good to take these three things as main points and expand on them. Of course, you won’t come up with it in one sitting! When you're starting, write down one thing related to each point, add more in a week, and every week readjust and get closer. You elaborate on your idea for the following year, and for the following decade.

Of course, you won’t be able to do it at the beginning! If you can’t do it, make a three-month idea. If you have never planned your life, you definitely don’t have an idea of how to plan a decade, or even thirty years ahead, you’ll have to learn, and it won’t happen overnight.

Planning three months ahead though, anyone should be able to manage, sit on it every week, plan the month, let it settle in your mind, then proceed. Trust me, you’ll be as surprised as I was when your three-month plans come true. It will boost your energy tremendously, and next time you will make a plan for six months, or a year.

You don’t have to plan a Ferrari and a villa in the Seychelles right the way, something modest will do at the beginning as well, as no successful person has sprung up overnight.

My personal experience

I created my first vision in mid-2018, so that’s almost five years now, it wasn’t a very big idea, rather an idea about education and professional progression within six months, which I managed to realize, then I set a plan for a year, and then for two years. Everything sort of worked out, after five years I can say my life has transformed.

From a passive person, I became a fairly active person who has a very clear idea of his life, I have been supplementing a ten-year vision in the past year, and now I am slowly transitioning to planning my whole life up to 85 (I’m 40 years old now). I have some vision and idea of how I want to live my life, and it’s really cool.

It is completely surreal, how it boosts my energy, how I have started to succeed much more in many ways, and how it works. This is why it aches my heart quite a bit when I see so many people who just don’t have that idea and let someone else’s projections of them control their lives.

What is the biggest surprise to me that in the beginning those plans were mostly financial and in material goods, and this has started to switch into a more complex idea about life in the last year, two. Instead of a new Ferrari, I, for example, think about wanting to go on a walk or do some sporting activity every day. Instead of a yacht, I think about wanting to be a respected member of society. It’s quite an interesting personality metamorphosis, but I think everyone must mature to it at some point.