Without execution, ‘vision’ is just another word for hallucination.
Mark V. Hurd
In the previous publication in pursuit of your dreams, we treated the power of decision. But really decisions can’t be made in vacuum and have as an anchor the power of vision. Without vision no man or woman attain to greatness, for it is the instrument that gives direction to accomplishment. Vision is the ability to construct a mental image or desire of a desired future state.
Mind is cause every other thing is effect. Your mind is the factory where your aspirations and dreams are conceived. And what your mind can conceive and believe, with patience and persistence will come to pass.
In life, take it from me you will not be paid for your hard work but your vision. It is what some people mistake as saying you don’t have to work hard but smart. There is no replacement for hard work no matter how hard you wish it were so. Ask any successful person of any high degree and he will tell you the need to work hard. The difference between the manual laborer working hard and being paid little is the vision and image on the inside.
Think big, dream big and believe big and your vision will well be realized. You will no longer be a failure when you begin to build visions on the inside for so many areas of your life – family, career, relationships, business, health, spiritual and education etc.
Why should you have a vision? Having a vision is not some fancy thing that you do lightly as some buzz word or something sexy. It can literally turn your life around or destroy you if lack it.
You should have a vision because it will give you direction, visionlessness is directionlessness you will end up in a ditch. A vision gives you a destination to work on because you start with the end in mind. It will help you make the right choices and decisions on your way to success.
A powerful vision is the greatest antidote to failure and setback because you have seen it in your mind and nothing with convince you to give up. Thomas Edison conducted thousands of experiments to develop the light bulb and met with failure but his vision gave him persistence until he reached his goal.
Vision gives you power and the ability to organize when others are faltering. With vision Christopher Columbus wrote to several emperors in Europe to finance his voyage and met with many failures but stuck with it until he got the finance and men and the rest of it is history, he discovered the newfound land. If he had no vision, he would not have bothered to organize such a great expedition.
There is a lot of money out there waiting to finance the right visions. For those of you interested in entrepreneurship a whole universe of opportunity is available for new vision and direction. You can’t fail when you dare to envision great and novel things.
The question remains how do you cultivate vision? It is really a simple process just like our everyday mental function. Like thinking of what to prepare to eat, how to get to work and planning your day. Vision starts with the end in sight. By thinking of what you want to be in a year, five or ten years in some aspect of your life.
Developing your vision is easier than you thought and is all around you, have been using that power all your life. Only this time you want to use if deliberately to supercharge your career and achieve more success and excellence. I examine a few strategies for developing vision below.
Reading and research can help you find untapped areas that you can envision new solutions. Be a reader, leaders are readers, therefore invest in continuous learning and research, you will learn to dream up new things. In your reading, new ideas will flash in your mind and therefore use them us building blocks to cultivate your visions.
It is often said the unexamined life is not worth living and therefore you will have to reflect on yourself in several areas of your life. Are you getting the results you desire in the area of your life you are examining? For instance, do you have the right amount of financial success you envisage for yourself now, do you have the right kind of health and relationships etc. If your reflections show that you’re falling short, it is time to develop a vision of where your life should be.
Role models are everywhere, they may be your peers, family members or colleagues at work. Is there somebody you admire their accomplishments and will like to be like them? Is there a person in your profession who is a highflyer, then certainly craft a vision to be like them. In fact, role models can be chosen from any country or continent, these days with the power of the internet you can emulate people from afar reading their books, listening to them or watching them. Use your role models to develop your vision.
Develop a vision board of your life and put it in a place you can see regularly. A vision board is a board you use to place symbols of what you aspire your life to be, at best it should be pictorial depicting important symbols of your life. You can cut out magazines and place on a board symbols of your future life, like the kind of career you will be in, your future house, business, physical fitness and more. Place it at a place you can see it as a reminder of where you are going.
After you have developed your vision, you must believe it and work towards it. All you need to do is think outside the box, think of ways to achieve and keep working on it until its realized never taking setbacks as permanent but always coming back to realize your big vision. Just be sold to your vision and watch it unfold.
Listen to this powerful piece on the power of vision by Arnold Schwarzenegger. Is one video I like and I keep coming back to it. Please vision with attention and catch the inspiration! God Bless!
