Photo by Riccardo Annandale on Unsplash
“It’s vision.”
That’s what Lewis Howes, the entrepreneur and host of the “School of Greatness” podcast answered when asked on the Bigger Pockets podcast what the greats have in common.
Howes has interviewed hundreds of people who have achieved remarkable things so when he says something like this I pay attention.
I don’t know if it’s because it’s 2020 or the “year of vision”, but this topic keeps coming up. The impact of vision has become so apparent that I see its effect everywhere.
I see it in Elon Musk’s quest to bring human life to mars.
We can see it when we listen to Martin Luther King Jr’s, “I have a dream” speech.
At the grand opening of Walt Disney World in Orlando, a reporter said to Lillian Disney (Walt Disney’s wife) that it was unfortunate that her husband could not be there to see it finished (Walt Disney had since passed away). And she responded by saying he saw it more clearly than anyone else.
When Nelson Mandela was released from prison and he spoke about a “rainbow nation” of united people in South Africa that was vision.
Born blind and deaf, Hellen Keller would fight her way to becoming an activist for several social causes, a speaker, and an author. She famously said, “The only thing worse than being blind is having sight but no vision”.
The bible says in Proverbs 29:18 says that without vision the people perish. And there are over 130 scriptures that mention vision.
But what is vision?
Merriam Webster defines vision as “a mode of seeing or conceiving”. But it’s more than that.
I’m listening to a book called “How to Stay Motivated” by Zig Ziglar (deceased) one of my favorite people of all time by the way and in it, he shares my favorite definition of vision when he describes it as “a clearly articulated results-oriented picture of a future you intend to create.”
The key word here is YOU.
The future YOU intend to create.
But if vision is so impactful and critical then why do so few of us have it?
I heard leadership guru Simon Sinek say that not all of us are visionaries so we can’t have a vision. But I disagree.
I’m starting to think that we all have a vision for life or a picture of the future, but that image is not always one that we have carefully and intentionally designed.
Is it possible that some of us have attached ourselves to personal visions that limit or even prevent us from reaching our potential or having better lives? I think so.
So how can we create a mental picture of an aspirational personal future? And if this tool or ability is freely accessible to all then why doesn’t everyone do this naturally?
What’s your spark?
One possible reason we don’t instinctively create compelling personal visions is that we are lacking a creative or inspirational spark that comes from some type of experience (both positive or negative).
We need something to inspire us or wake us up to override the default mental programming we’ve involuntarily downloaded from social conditioning, cultural expectations, past experiences, and perceived limitations.
So how do we create a spark that inspires a compelling personal life vision? I’m not sure but I have some ideas. This would be a great problem to solve, so I’ll be obsessing over this for the next year and I’m thinking about writing a book on this topic.
But aside from those unexpected experiences that force us to look for a better future, other sparks can be asking good questions that make us think about the future we want to create. We can also get this spark from
- Journaling
- Take some downtime to reflect on the future
- TedTalks and great conversations
- Great books
- Coaching
So, how are you creating a tomorrow that is bigger and better than your today?