i'm a leader: part three

     Ryan Greenberg is a pretty big deal here at BYU. In fact, he is what most of us aspire to be, but for whatever reason think it is unattainable. He is the BYUSA President. Last week he came in and was our guest speaker. It was really great to feel like I got to know him a little bit, especially because I'm pretty sure I voted for him. His focus was on visions and goals for our personal life and leadership. I really enjoyed reading over the BYU mission statement and vision, which I'm sure I've seen before but never really thought about. We have a pretty extraordinary school that has high expectations for us as students, but also our professors, instructors, and administrators. Reading the vision and mission statement was motivating to me, something I think should be true with all visions or goals of organizations that you are associated with. Visions and goals should have a lot in common to be "good." Goals are great when they follow the SMART layout: specific, measurable, attainable, realistic, timely. A personal opinion, but one that the lectures agreed with for the most part, is that visions can be more crazy! Visions are like "real" dreams. Not the dreams like "marry a prince" or "drive a BMW," but the dreams that will actually make you happy like "get married in the temple" and "don't get into debt." Then from your vision you can form goals that make it achievable.
     In class we had to get down to business. We had to write down our life vision and goals. It was intense. Above is a picture of my vision. I was feeling really great and made a mind map, just like the other 1486 I had to make in high school. However, I put much more thought into this than any high school mind map. I broke my vision mind map into five sections: church, overall, family, education, career. Though some things are distant, like confident, loved, and respected kids, there are things I can be doing down to prepare for my vision to come true. I talked about my education, which directly connects to the fulfilling career I want. I want my career to be balanced with my family life, which has a lot to do with who I marry. I want to marry in the temple, which I can prepare for now by using my temple recommend and constantly growing my testimony. All of these things can make me a happy, loving, compassionate person. I would say I am somewhat of a "visionary person." I am a dreamer. I want a perfect life, who doesn't? I want to be a powerful business woman, but yet be super soccer mom. Things like these get a practical spin when you turn to my goals page. My goals were more specific and relevant to right now. This semester I would really like to have a 3.5 or higher GPA. Last year I was extremely social and how intense and difficult BYU was immediately turned me off to caring about my GPA. This was a big change from high school, where I maintained a 4.0 up until my senior year, and when I got my first B I was crushed. I need to strive to do better at balancing school, work (Yes, I got a job!), church, and friends. A few other goals were to attend the temple monthly, meet with a business program adviser, and pray for opportunities to serve friends. I'm grateful that I was forced to put hopes, dreams, visions, and goals on paper. Some may be crazy, some may be too easy, but some may really need to frequently read and thought about to make me a better person, now and when I am becoming the person my vision speaks of.