How to Create a Vision for Your Future and Write Your Legacy
“If my mind can conceive it, and my heart can believe it, then I can achieve it.” Muhammad Ali’s words set the tone for a brave practice Rand Selig champions in Thriving!: write a personal vision that you can live with, read often, and revise as you grow. Selig says this simple habit has been “immensely helpful,” and he urges you to write your own .
Why a Personal Vision Statement Works
A vision statement helps you create your purpose and act on it. Selig suggests including four parts: your core values and beliefs, your unique talents and gifts, your purpose, and your long range mission, for example the next ten years. Writing it, then reviewing and revising it, clarifies what matters and gives you courage to move on it .
Start With What You Stand For
Selig models what clear values look like. He names beliefs like ecological sustainability, whole systems thinking with collaboration, relationships and community as the heart of long term success, quality in service and promises, a commitment to everyone’s potential, and the highest standards of ethics and integrity. Seeing values in writing makes them real and practical. It also lets you check choices against them, again and again .
Put Purpose on Paper
Selig shares his own five part purpose. He aims to make the world better, be supportive and compassionate with family and friends, focus giving on root causes, stay a lifelong learner, and care for health so he can live with vitality. He then asks a direct question: “Have you written a vision statement? If so, when did you last review and revise it? If not yet, when will you” ?
Choose Goals That Are Truly Meaningful
When you turn your vision into goals, Selig offers a simple test for meaningful work. You want three things: enough complexity to stretch you, enough autonomy to own your work, and a clear link between effort and reward. Then ask, Is it significant, ethical, measurably effective, transformative, novel, and will it endure. The aim is not perfection; it is a strong fit with your values and gifts, and with where you want your life energy to go .
Align Your Time With Your Purpose
Selig points out that time choices shape a meaningful life. He invites you to spend more time on important, not urgent work, the kind that advances your real goals. Use time effectively, not just efficiently. This shift helps your vision move from words on a page to steady action across weeks and months .
Connect Your Vision to Real Needs
Look at the biggest problems around you, or in your own community. Which one do you care about most. What role could you play. What would it take to have a real impact. Selig’s questions turn a vision into service, and service into a life you can respect .
Meaning and Happiness Are Different
Selig highlights a key insight. Meaning often asks you to think across past, present, and future, to give to others, and to take on hard things. Happiness leans more on present ease, health, and wealth. You can seek both, yet do not confuse them. The more meaning you find, the more courage you feel to pursue even greater meaning and purpose .
Live Your Legacy Now
Selig draws a helpful line between capital L Legacy and little l legacy. Capital L Legacy is the total story of your life and what you pass on. Little l legacy is how you are living today, in a role, a job, a friendship, a choice. He writes that legacy can be “a source of joy and a feeling of fulfillment,” and he names four legacy components he aims to build in every relationship: Excellence, Purpose, Encouragement, Love. Then he asks, What legacy do you want to build during your lifetime and then leave behind ?
He also returns to this idea when he talks about evolving with soul. Live your legacy while you are alive, he says, as an expression of generosity and connection. Let your true self be seen. These are acts of hope and kindness that make us bigger people, people who are thriving .
Your One Page Vision, Written Like a Letter to Yourself
Here is how to do it, simply and sincerely, using Selig’s approach.
- Values and beliefs: Write a short list of the principles you live by. Keep them visible. Use them to make choices you can stand by .
- Gifts and strengths: Name the talents you want to use in service of others. Be concrete and kind to yourself while you do it .
- Purpose: Write a short paragraph about the difference you want to make and the kind of person you want to be in relationships. Review and revise it over time .
- Ten year mission: List the few things you will build or contribute in the long run. Use the meaningful work test and questions above to refine the list .
- Legacy, now and later: Name the small ways you will live Excellence, Purpose, Encouragement, and Love this week, then note what you hope others will feel from your life over time .
Keep Choosing to Steer
Selig closes with a call to action that is clear and kind. To be the author of your own story, take hold of the reins, be in the driver’s seat and steer, and set sail. Then practice. “What we practice, we become.” We only learn to walk when we risk falling. Keep going, keep practicing, and your choices will shape a life that fits your vision .
If you want more on writing a vision you can live today, read this related piece, which pairs well with the ideas above: Embrace Growth: Live Purposefully and Thrive.
A Gentle Next Step
Take ten quiet minutes. Write the first draft of your vision. Name one issue you care about and one act you will take this week. Then answer Selig’s question for yourself, “Have you written a vision statement, and if not yet, when will you,” and set the date to review it next .