Finding Vision
“All men/women who have achieved great things have been great dreamers.” ~ Orison Swett Marden
Vision: The Single Most Valuable Resource on Earth…
So much of our lives revolve around people with outstanding vision. The founders of Apple, Amazon, Starbucks, Google, Facebook and Twitter immediately come to mind as men and woman who built companies who changed the very fabric of the future.
Who would have ever thought that, way back in 1979, Bill Gate’s vision of “making the PC more important than the mainframe…” or Larry Page’s vision in 1998 of “indexing all the knowledge in the known universe and making it instantly available at the click of a button…” would result in inventions and innovations that would rock the world?!
Or, Steve Jobs’ desire to create products that people will naturally love and want to buy. He built a team of people who looked for good all around them.. then made it great… then greater… then morphed it into “insanely brilliant?”
Without question, the single greatest resource a person can acquire is vision. Without it, you are blind… blind to opportunity… blind to the power to achieve… blind to the ups and downs of daily life.
I say acquire, because vision is not an inherited attribute… it is unique to each person and is far more “nurture-based” than “nature-based.”
Some of the “dumbest” people I have ever met (politically correct: intelligence challenged) have had some of the best ideas I have ever heard of! In many cases, they were smart enough to get the help of even smarter people to fan the sparks of inner-genius into the flames of passionate pursuit… and ultimately created something out of nothing… then built on that to produce real wealth.
Likewise, some of the strangest — yet most successful — ideas were hatched by men and woman who saw something just beyond their internal-peripheral vision and fought to make their vision real. Sarah Blakely immediately comes to mind. Cut off the feet of pantyhose and we’ll call them SPANKS!
REALLY? Spanks?
At just 42, and in only 15 years, Sarah became the youngest female billionaire in the world. Starting with nothing more than a VISION. How?
Through her amazing powers of observation! She believed that the feet SHOULD be cut off… the thread count beefed up… and the result would be women who are instantly “right-sized!”
So, Where Does World-Changing Vision Come From?
This, of course, is the $100 Trillion question.
Vision comes from seeing differently, or as Alan Kay would opine, “Point of view is worth 80 IQ points.”
Continuously changing your perspective is the key to becoming a visionary.
Visionaries see the world around them not so much as problems to be solved as much as they see opportunities to be seized.
Vision is found at the intersection of imagination, knowledge and logic.
When we wrote Success On Purpose, we found that there was a simple key to living a life of happiness, satisfaction and significance — to becoming an enduring success by any definition.
It comes down to just 3 variables — all of which are in your control:
- Your VALUES… the core drivers that give you the big WHY of your life. Essentially, absolute clarity of your values leads to absolute clarity of vision.
- Your VISION… how you see all your Someday Dreams being realized. Absolute clarity of vision leads to absolute clarity of the role you must play to achieve that vision. A crystal-clear vision sows the seeds of its own accomplishment when you go from the big WHY to the big WHO.
- Your ROLES… WHO you will become to live your values and achieve your visions. Absolute clarity of the role you will play leads to the unwavering CONVICTION that what you believe is right for you to be doing is the RIGHT thing to actual do. This heightened Conviction leads to unstoppable Commitment and causes you to draw on the Courage necessary to take every action required to realize your vision.
As you will learn when you do the exercises in Success On Purpose, your VALUES drive your VISIONS, creating the emotional path that transforms Someday dreams into coherent thoughts that drive future ACTION.
There can be no VISION without a strong bond to your VALUES, as a weak emotional bond between the vision and the values contained in it will never be strong enough for you to even THINK about pursuing it.
Again, it is this connective tissue between what you value, and what you envision, that determines if the idea remains locked inside your imagination, or is drawn out to become a full fledged vision-based opportunity.
BUT… There can be no ACHIEVEMENT without creating the right ROLE for you to play.
So many visions die a slow, agonizing death from neglect where there is no attachment to the proper role. (It is the connection between your VISIONS and your ROLES that gives you the right to EXPECT that they will be made real… rather than just hope, pray and wish that they are realized.)
Finally, it is the connections between your VALUES and your ROLES that create the EXPERIENCES you will translate into beautiful memories and tangible RESULTS — wealth… power… security… a life that truly matters.
Living your visions is the objective.
The key is to create the low-level connections between your values, visions and roles which directly lead to what we call the 3 E’s of success: Emotions, Expectations and Experiences.
It is this triangulation of your Values, Vision and Roles that propels a good idea into world-changing opportunities. Learn more in Success On Purpose…
So, How Do You Find Vision?
There are a million and one opinions on this, so I will not bore you with their ideas! Google things like change management, innovation, invention, creative destruction, etc. and you will gain wide-ranging perspective.
For me, it starts with a single word: AWARENESS.
I pay attention to all kinds of things in every different field imaginable. I look for CONNECTIONS and how one thing might relate to something totally different.
I look at PROBLEMS first, but not the way most people do. I rarely, if ever, look for a solution within a problem. Rather, I ask the WHY question, “Why is this the way it is?”
I then FANTASIZE about the most idiotic, stupid, crazy, ridiculous — blown way out of proportion — answer to the “why” question. For example, you see something that makes you go a little nuts, and wonder what Jack Bauer (from the TV show 24) would do. Jack doesn’t just go after the bad guy… he goes after the guy who served the bad guy lunch… THEN goes after their families!
Imagine the worst… the best… the most outrageous… and everything in between.
Usually, nothing happens!
But, in our fantasy life exists the kernel of an idea that has the potential to leap out of our subconscious and into our reality.
As you find out more about something… start looking at the issue from outside the box… even outside the boundaries of any form of “conventional wisdom” right down to the absolutely absurd… a coherent thought will emerge.
Write it down! Capture it!
Journal it. Crush it to the point where you can see the distilled elixir of its most basic pieces and parts. Slice and dice it down to the seeds.
Inside the condensed and distilled essence of the thought you will — 100% of the time — find the seeds of greatness.
Yes, this is a bold, overarching statement that to many will seem absolute nuts… a claim they will never buy in to. Nevertheless, it has made me rich, happy and constantly on the hunt for transforming my next Someday Dream into a stream of SMART GOALS — Specific Measurable Achievable Realistic Tangible — into which I will turn into the seeds of ever greater opportunity.
Open your mind. Immerse Yourself. Start believing in the beauty of your dreams.
Some self-confronting questions: Where do I want to be at any given time? How am I going to get there? What do I have to do to get myself from where I am to where I want to be? What’s the first, small step I can take to get moving?~ George Ford
Go through the VISION exercises in Success On Purpose and you will understand how easy “duplicatable” success actually is. Somebody else did something very similar to what you want to do, so you too can find a way to do it. Maybe even build on their successes and leapfrog their efforts!
Go though all your Someday Dreams and ask…
Why not?
Why not me?
Why not me right now?
You will not only find Authentic Direction and Natural Mission for your life, you will find that which you want the most… empowering VISION that leads to making the rest of your life the best of your life!
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PS Do NOT buy into the myth of life that you are not good enough… not smart enough… not talented enough… not SOMETHING enough. Pure bull.
We wrote Success On Purpose to give people a huge edge in their daily struggle to find the results they want and success they desire. If you frequently find your IDEA RESERVOIR running on empty, it’s time to find an new Starting Point. Click Here…
Category: Editorials, Featured
