I came across this blog while clicking through links on a different blog The Wellness Warrior. Her post about the 3 Steps To Creating a Powerful and Inspiring Vision has me filling out pages and pages in my journal! So here goes Step 2 of that process. Perhaps it will inspire you to create a vision!
Step 2 – Write it out.
To give you an idea of how I am working this, in regard to volunteering in Sierre-Leone to lower maternal mortality this is what I’ve written in my journal:
What is your vision of what you want?
I would like to do a 3-5 year program in Sierra-Leone that focuses on reducing maternal mortality. It would include educating the maternity care providers, the community about the importance of prenatal care AND bring in the necessary tools needed to enable the maternity care providers to care for women in the region.
What would that look like?
A small room set up in local hospitals with educational dolls and books and videos. Clinics in out-lying areas that have the necessary tools for delivery if not able to get to a hospital. The staff would be trained to deal with life threatening issues like post-partum hemorrhage and would have the adequate medication and emergency life skills to fix the problem.
If you were living your dream life what would you be doing?
I would be organizing the program from the States, from writing for grants, holding fundraisers and training volunteers. Then I would take my band of volunteers to Sierra-Leone and begin the long process of making a difference.
What would be happening? Write it down.
Benefactors with BIG hearts would contribute the money needed to buy supplies (both education and medical) and to fund the project. They would commit to this being a long-term project. Once the implementation of training began, hundreds of healthcare workers and parents to be would sign up for the classes.
What are the characteristics of your dream job, your dream man, your dream body?
LOL… I could write a book on the 3 of THOSE choices! But I’ll stick with the first one.
1. Successful reduction of maternal mortality resulting in…
2. Successful reduction of infant mortality
3. Immense satisfaction in seeing the community empower themselves with knowledge
What would it feel like when you had this? Write it down.
AMAZING
What would an ideal day in your dream life look like? What time would you get up, what would you eat, what type of work would you do, where would you be, who would you be with, what would you be wearing? Write it down.
Up at the crack of dawn… some yoga and meditation to get the day started. Review of what training would be done that day, what clinic or hospital duties that day, review or audit of success or failures. I would eat lots of meat and veggies. I would be in or around the Capital Freetown. I would be with local healthcare practitioners, volunteers from the program (I’d love to have a nice mix of med students, midwifery students, nursing students, anthropology students and people that had graduated from those types of programs or ANYONE who enthusiastically embraced the philosophy of reducing maternal mortality in this region). I’d be wearing whatever I was comfortable in, of course respecting the culture of the people I am around.
So, what say you? That is A LOT to think about! If you were living your dream life what would YOU be doing?
Ciao!
This is a powerful slide show: http://www.time.com/time/photogallery/0,29307,1993805,00.html

Sad, yet real truth about maternal mortality 😦