A vision is a way of defining and achieving a desirable future. Having a vision:
An exercise to help you develop a vision is near the bottom of the page.
Students are more likely to reach an objective if we can see it, and can imagine the steps (like best practices and rehearsal by an athlete - see fourth paragraph) to reach it. By following the guidelines for client centered counseling and patient education described at the web site, health educators can help students be more successful.
Visioning leads to brainstorming sessions to solve individual problems. Visioning results in a short-term to long-range plans. For students, with a 2-week or 2-year horizon, visioning also sets a strategy for creating a personal mission, plus planning and achieving the goals. It allows for a focused mission, well-defined purpose and an optimistic future. Having a vision of the future in mind (preferably written or drawn on paper). Visions are a mental model of the future health status and or process of achieving it. The image of the future is positive and motivating.
The most important aspect of a vision is the person raises it up for others to see. Visions should be elaborate enough to provide direction for planning and goal setting. Visions that work are clear so they can easily be understood and acted upon. On my home page, you read that my vision is that 80% of students will have received the results of health risk appraisals in Student Health Services, The Wellness Center and classrooms, plus 60% of will have completed the Wellness Card by graduation. It is public and elaborate enough.
Visioning has been used by all kinds of people. Personal visions save lives and help find new ways of improving our daily lives. It has become a familiar technique in sports. Athletes take the time to imagine themselves going through the steps of jumping higher, skiing or running faster than they have ever done before. Citizens can use visioning to create images that can help to guide change in the city. Oregon established benchmarks to measure progress toward its long-term goals. Ray Wyman, Jr. has put the visions of other people on his web page. Check them out at http://www.heavypen.com/vision/index.html. See Cal Poly Pomona's Vision Statement.
In a typical visioning exercise a health educator asks clients to imagine they are walking through their life as it should be as little as two-weeks to, even fifteen or more years into the future. Any of these questions could be asked. What do they see? What are they doing? What do they have? What do they look like? How is their health? Who are they doing things with? How do they make decisions? What are they eating? Where are they working or studying? People record their visions in written or pictorial form; in diagrams, sketches, models, photographic montages, and in written briefs.
Another web site to check is: VISIONING http://www.fhwa.dot.gov/reports/pittd/vision.htm