I meet and work with many people who are often at a crossroads in life.

They tend to be over 30 and have had some business experience, some success, some failure and they've set goals and achieved many of them...but something is missing.

Maybe you are experiencing this?

More often than not this comes down to one sentence..."I don't know where I am going in my life and I feel a little lost."

This is mainly down to one thing...lack of Vision.

A Failure of Vision is a WHY problem. They happen because your vision or goal for what you want to be, do and have (your why) doesn't align with the actions you are taking.

There are three primary ways to fix Failures of Vision.

Take stock of your life. People rarely take the time to think critically about their vision and values. Of course, there is no requirement that says you must to develop a personal vision for your work or your life. Many people prefer to go-with-the-flow and take life as it comes. In theory, that's just fine. But in practice, there is a problem:

Adopting someone else's vision as your own—whether it be from family, friends, celebrities, your boss, or society as a whole—is unlikely to lead to your personal dream. 

Your identity and your habits need to be aligned.

Because of this, you need to take stock of your life. What do you want to accomplish? How do you want to spend your days? It is not someone else’s job to figure out the vision for your life. This can only be done by you. My main suggestion is to start by exploring your core values. 

Once you know what your values are, you can align them with your vision.

Take the time to do this properly as this is the bedrock of your future.  If you get this wrong or if you don't do it, then you will be fullfiling someone else's vision for your life.

Determine your non-negotiable. Your “non-negotiable” is the one (or more) thing(s) you are not willing to budge on, no matter what. One common mistake is to make the non-negotiable your strategy, when it should be your vision. It's very easy to get fixated on your idea. But if you're going to get obsessed with something, get obsessed with your vision, not your idea. Be firm on the vision, not on this particular version of your idea. Jeff Bezos founder of Amazon has said, “We are stubborn on vision. We are flexible on details.” 

The key is to realise that nearly everything is a detail, your tactics, your strategy, even your business model. If your non-negotiable is to be a successful entrepreneur, then there are many ways to achieve that vision. If Amazon's non-negotiable is to “be earth’s most customer centric company,” they can lose billions on failed projects such as Amazon Auctions and Amazon zShops and still reach their goal.

Once you are confident in your vision, it is rare to lose it in one fell swoop. There are so few mistakes that lead to the complete annihilation of a dream. More likely, you failed at a strategy level and felt demoralised. This knocked your enthusiasm and you gave up not because you should, but because you felt like it. 

Your emotions caused you to turn a Stage 1  failure into a Stage 2 and 3 failure. Most of the mistakes that people assume are Failures of Vision are actually Failures of Strategy. Many entrepreneurs, artists, and creators get hung up on a particular version of their idea and when the idea fails they give up on the vision as well. Don't develop a sense of ownership over the wrong thing. There are nearly infinite ways to achieve your vision if you are willing to be flexible on the details.

Navigate criticism. Criticism can be an indicator of failed strategies and tactics, but—assuming you're a reasonable person with good intentions—it is rarely an indicator of a failed vision. If you are committed to making your vision a non-negotiable factor in your life and not giving up on the first try, then you have to be willing to navigate criticism. You don't need to apologise for the things you love, but you do have to learn how to deal with critics, trolls and haters.