Stage 3: Vision & Direction | Life Vision

Every exercise you've completed in Stage 3 so far has given you a different angle on the same question: what do you actually want? And if what you discovered is that you want multiple, seemingly contradictory things - that's not a problem to solve, it's the raw material you're writing from. Your bucket list showed you what you want to experience, your anti-vision showed you what you refuse to tolerate, your ideal lifestyle described how you want your days to feel, and a life scenario lab tested which versions of your future pull you hardest.

Your rocking chair exercise showed you what you want to feel at the end, your eulogy showed you how you want to be remembered, your future self letter told you who you're becoming, and, finally, your purpose exercise gave you the why.

Each exercise was a single lens. Useful on its own, but incomplete. This step is where you pull all eight lenses together and build one coherent picture of your life vision.

A life vision is a written description of the life you're designing toward. It's specific enough to guide real decisions, broad enough to leave room for surprises, and honest enough that reading it back makes you feel something. Think of it as your north star. Every choice, every prototype, every trade-off in the next phase of this course gets tested against what you write here.

The reason this comes almost last in Stage 3 (and not first) is that most people can't write a good vision from scratch. They default to what sounds impressive, what their parents want for them, or what culture has trained them to aim for. The previous exercises were designed to strip all of that away, layer by layer, until what's left is actually yours.:)

-THE RESEARCH

Goal-setting theory

Edwin Locke and Gary Latham spent decades studying how goals affect performance. Their core finding, published across hundreds of studies: specific, challenging goals consistently produce better outcomes than vague intentions like "do your best." The effect size is large and reliable. A written life vision is, at its core, a specific goal. The act of writing it down forces you to commit to concrete language, which is exactly the mechanism Locke and Latham found to be effective.

Personal strivings and well-being

Robert Emmons (1986, 1999) studied what he called "personal strivings," the ongoing goals that characterise what a person is typically trying to do. His research found that people whose strivings were coherent with each other (pointing in the same general direction) reported higher well-being than those whose strivings conflicted. A life vision is an exercise in making your strivings coherent. When your work goals, relationship goals, health goals, and growth goals all pull in a compatible direction, you stop fighting yourself.

Self-concordance

Kennon Sheldon's self-concordance model explains why some goals stick and others don't. Goals that match your authentic interests and core values produce more sustained effort, more progress, and more well-being when achieved. Goals adopted because of guilt, pressure, or external expectations produce less effort and less satisfaction, even when you hit them. The implication for this exercise is that a life vision written to impress other people will fail you, whereas one written from deep self-knowledge will carry you forward.

A note on visualisation

You've probably heard of vision boards. The research on pure visualisation is mixed, and some of it is discouraging. Gabriele Oettingen's work showed that simply fantasising about a positive future can actually reduce motivation, because the brain treats the fantasy as already achieved and thus the energy drops.

What does work is combining a clear written vision with what Peter Gollwitzer called "implementation intentions": if-then plans that connect your vision to specific actions. "If it's Monday morning, then I spend the first hour on my creative project." The vision gives direction while the implementation intention gives traction. You'll build the implementation side in Stage 4. Right now, your job is to get the direction right. :)

-THE EXERCISES

Exercise 1: The synthesis

Before you write anything new, pull the threads from every exercise you've already completed so far. Go back through your previous work and write down the single most important insight from each one. Pay close attention - if two exercises pointed to the same thing, make sure you note that. If two exercises contradict each other, note that too.

Take your time with this. The quality of your life vision depends on how honestly you summarise what you've already discovered.

Bucket List - What you want to experience

Anti-Vision - What you refuse to accept

Ideal Lifestyle - How you want to live day to day

The Life Scenario Lab - Which paths call you most

Rocking Chair - What you want to feel looking back

Eulogy - How you want to be remembered

Future Self Letter - Who you're becoming

Purpose - Why you're here

Now look at the list as a whole and highlight anything that appeared more than once across different exercises. Those recurring themes are the load-bearing walls of your vision. They're the things that keep showing up because they're truly yours.

Note recurring themes you notice.

Exercise 2: Vision by domain

Look at your life as a connected system, where progress in one area supports progress in every other area.

For each domain below, write a short paragraph describing what that part of your life looks like when it's working well in your overall life vision. Be specific. "Good health" is too vague; "I run 3 times a week, sleep 7 hours, cook most of my own meals, and feel physically strong" is a vision you can actually use.

Write in the present tense, as if you're already living this. Be specific and concrete.

Work and purpose
What does your work look like? What kind of problems do you solve? How does your work connect to your purpose?

Relationships and love
What do your closest relationships feel like? Who is around you? How do you show up for the people you care about?

Health and body
How does your body feel? What physical habits do you keep? What's your relationship with energy, sleep, and food?

Home and environment
Where do you live? What does your space look like? What feeling does it give you when you walk in?

Finances and freedom
What does financial security look like for you? How much is enough? What does money give you the freedom to do?

Hobbies, projects, and fun
What hobbies do you engage in to have fun? What projects do you have (if any) to feel whole or to self-express? How do you spend your spare time just to have fun?

Contribution and community
How do you give back? What communities are you part of? What do you contribute that goes beyond your own life?

If there are any other areas of your life that you want to include, do that.

After you've written them all, read them together. Do they fit? Does progress in one area support the others, or does something clash? If your work vision requires 70-hour weeks and your health vision requires daily exercise and 8 hours of sleep, you've found a conflict that needs resolving before you move on.

Note conflicts or tensions you notice between domains.

Exercise 3: The one-page life vision

This is the document that matters most. Everything before this was preparation. Now you're going to write a single page that captures the whole vision: who you are, what you're building, how you want to feel, what you refuse to accept, and why any of it matters.

Write freely. You can revise later. The first version will be imperfect, and that's fine. A rough but honest vision is worth more than a polished one you don't believe.

Who your are
Draw from Stage 1 (values, strengths, personality, identity). In 2 to 3 sentences, who are you at your core?

What you're building
Draw from Stages 2 and 3 (purpose, life scenario lab, ideal lifestyle, bucket list). What does the life you're building actually look like - one that holds everything you discovered about yourself, not just the parts that are easy to explain? If you have multiple visions pulling at you, don't collapse them. Write the life that makes space for all of them.

How your multitudes coexist
If you're someone who carries multiple visions - the builder and the wanderer, the maker and the connector - write a sentence or two about how they live together in this life. Are they sequential (one chapter leads to the next)? Simultaneous (different days, different seasons)? Woven together in the same work? You don't need to resolve the tension - just to name how they relate.

How you want to feel
This is where most visions miss. We chase achievements, titles, numbers, but forget to ask how we actually want to feel when we wake up on a regular day. Peace of mind is a valid answer here, and for many people, the most important one, too - just that a deep, settled sense that your life is yours and you're spending it well.

What you refuse to accept
Draw from your anti-vision. What are the non-negotiables? What will you walk away from, even if it means less money, less status, or less approval?

Your purpose
Draw from your purpose exercise. In one or two sentences, why are you here? What's the through-line that connects everything above?

Your life vision
Now rewrite the sections above into a single continuous piece of text. This is the document you'll come back to when you need to make a hard decision, when you feel lost, or when someone offers you something shiny that doesn't quite fit.

AI companion (optional)

How to use: Share your completed one-page life vision from Exercise 3. The AI will help you spot blind spots, contradictions, and places where the writing is too vague to be useful. It will also check whether your vision is genuinely yours or borrowed from external expectations. Use the feedback to revise, then come back and run it through again.

Copy and paste the prompt below into Claude, ChatGPT, or any AI assistant alongside your life vision:

I've just written a life vision as part of a life design exercise. I'm going to share the full text with you. I'd like you to help me pressure-test it. Specifically:
(1) Point out any parts that sound generic or borrowed rather than genuinely mine.
(2) Identify any contradictions between different sections.
(3) Ask me questions about anything that feels vague or underspecified.
(4) Check whether the vision is specific enough to actually guide a real decision, like choosing between two job offers.
(5) Notice if peace of mind appears as a genuine priority or if I've buried it under achievement goals. Don't rewrite the vision for me. Ask questions and point out gaps so I can rewrite it myself.
(6) If I've described multiple visions or directions, tell me whether they feel genuinely integrated or like I'm holding them in separate boxes. Ask me how they relate to each other in my actual daily life.

My life vision: [INSERT HERE]

Exercise 4: The reality check

A vision that lives in a notebook and never guides a real decision is not very useful. The list of questions below are designed to stress-test what you've written. Answer them - if the answer to any of them is a "no", go back and revise your vision before moving on.

• Is it specific enough to guide a real decision? (Could you use it to choose between two job offers, or two cities, or two ways to spend a Saturday?) - Yes/No - if no, what needs to change?

• Does it excite you? (When you read it back, do you feel energy, pull, wanting?) - Yes/No - if no, what needs to change?

• Does it scare you a little? (A vision that feels completely safe is probably too small.) - Yes/No - if no, what needs to change?

• Is it yours? (Not your parents' vision for you, not your partner's expectations, not what your culture or social media has trained you to want.) - Yes/No - if no, what needs to change?

• Would achieving it give you peace of mind? (Not just success or comfort, but a deep, settled sense that you're living the right life for you.) - Yes/No - if no, what needs to change?

• Does this vision make room for all of who you are, or did you edit out the parts that felt too contradictory to include? If you edited, put them back in.

If you answered "no" to any of these, go back to the vision and revise. A vision with a weak spot will crack under pressure. Better to find it now than six months in when you're making real trade-offs. :)

Reflection

Think about these after you've written your vision. They're designed to surface anything the exercises missed.

• If I read this vision to someone who knows me well, would they recognise me in it or would they say I'm performing?

• What did I leave out of the vision because it felt too vulnerable, too strange, or too impractical to include? Should it be in there?

• Which part of the vision am I most resistant to acting on? What does that resistance tell me?

• If I achieved everything in this vision except peace of mind, would it be enough? If not, what needs to shift?

• What's the smallest decision I could make this week that would be consistent with this vision?

• Five years from now, if I've been living according to this vision, what's different about my life?