Coaching Tools 101: 10 Great Life Vision Exercises & Ideas!

3 Goal-Setting Tools and 7 Life Vision Exercise Ideas!

I get a lot of questions from coaches who want to help their clients with life planning or life visioning exercises. Often people—and their coaches—are looking for a catch-all tool, workbook, visualisation or some other technique to help their clients.

Which is great, but there are endless life vision exercises and ways to come up with a life plan. Maybe that's why we sometimes feel overwhelmed and need help.

So in this article I share 10 of my favourite goal-setting tools and exercise ideas for discovering your life vision.

Here are 3 Life Visioning Exercises I always use with my Clients

These 3 life vision exercises are a series of 3 simple, yet powerful one-page life vision exercises to help clients connect with themselves and what they truly want from life.

1) Rocking Chair Life Vision Exercise

Rocking Chair Life Vision Exercise is a writing or journaling exercise where they imagine being 90, happy, healthy and look back over their life and what they have achieved. This gives a broad life vision—and points to key life values which can be helpful when helping to identify a client's values.

Please Note: Our Rocking Chair and 2 Other Life Vision Exercises tool offers two other life vision exercise options you can offer your clients: the retirement party and a celebratory newspaper article.

2) The Get Perspective Life Vision Exercise

This Get Perspective Vision Exercise asks them to detail where they want to be in 10 years, then 5, 2, 1 and 3 months time. The exercise deliberately works back from 10 years to the present day—this way they really get a sense of what they need to do NOW to make their 10 year goals happen.

3) The 3 Month Vision Worksheet

This 3 Month Vision Worksheet exercise asks people to consider where they would like to be in 3 months time in key life areas (eg. Personal Life, Home and Family, Health and Well-being, Career). It then asks for obstacles, who they need to be to achieve these goals.

And I always use these life visioning exercises in the above order.

When you do these 3 life vision exercises in the sequence above (from far into the future, then finishing up with their next 3 months) you get a broad overview of the vision our clients have for their life. AND then it brings people right back to the present day/immediate future.

This helps them focus on what they need NOW to do to get moving in the next 3 months that fits beautifully into the overall vision they have for their life. And there is plenty of scope for additional coaching, homework (or homefun) around each of the exercises.

And here are 7 More Great Life Vision Exercises & Ideas

I have used all of these life vision exercises at some point. It depends on the client, what they enjoy and where they are at in their lives.

1. The Eulogy Question: What would your client want said about them in their eulogy—or at their funeral/memorial service? What would they want written on their tombstone?
2. The Ideal Day: Ask clients to write about their "Ideal Day". They should start their "Ideal Day" from the moment they wake up—and write out what they'd like their day to be like. What would they do? How would they feel? Who would they see? What are they working towards? And so on.
3. Meet your Future Self: You could do a creative visualisation exercise where you talk them through meeting their future self and explore the life, relationships, environment etc. their future self is living. Just type "future self visualization script" into your internet search bar for lots of ideas!
4. The Magic Wand Question. If your client had a magic wand, what life would they create for themselves? What would they do in the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and then 25 years? Introducing "magic" frees people to imagine without limiting beliefs and fears!
5. The Wheel of Life. You could also simply use a Wheel of Life as a life visioning exercise! Simply ask your client what they'd like their life to look like in each of the key areas. Then ask them to make a list of what they want in each of the wheel segments. To learn everything you need to know about this powerful coaching tool read: The Complete Guide to the Wheel of Life.
6. Step to it! Why not devote a whole session to your client's life visioning and make this experience even more memorable by turning the exercise into something 'physical' they can do. How?
   • Ask your client to label and then put pieces of paper on the floor representing the next 3 months, 6 months, 1 year, 5 years, 10 years and then 25 years.
   • Get them to step on each piece of paper in sequence, close their eyes and then ask them questions. What do they see/feel/hear? Who is there with them? Where are they? What do they love about it?
   • Use the categories from the Wheel of Life to ask what is going on in different areas of their life.
   • As they answer all these questions, make notes for them. Then at the end give these to your clients!
   • Also, (if they are interested) give them homework to summarise and write this up in their own words.
7. Create a Vision Board: Suggest your client creates a Vision Board for what they want from their life. This could be for the next year, 5/10/20 years—or the rest of their lives. Ask your client what time period they would like to create a vision board around.

Top Tip: The more your clients write, the more life vision exercises they do, the more information and detail they will get. And the more rich and detailed their life vision is, the more inspiring it will be.