6 LIFE-TRANSFORMING TRUTHS -- #2 Develop a Vision
2. DEVELOP A VISION
Long ago my mentor told me to write my story, what my life had been. It involved not being the wife and mother I wanted to be. I wrote it when I started this blog, and it was hard to be honest with where I was and what I really thought of who I had become. She told me I could write a new story of how my life could be. This whole time, I hadn't been able to put my new story into words....Until a few weeks ago. I stayed up until 4am. I came up with this grand 5 year plan of selling our house, fixing up and flipping houses, traveling the world -- Thailand, Sri Lanka and other exotic places, doing good in other countries and having money to buy children blankets, and having more children (of course).... This plan was very specific, even sometimes week by week. It was exhilirating to make this plan. I dare say it was magical.
“Vision is seeing a future state with the mind’s eye. Vision is applied imagination.” —Stephen Covey
How Do I Develop A Vision?
Practice developing vision, which is envisioning what your life can become.
"A true vision or dream stirs the heart; whether it stems from desire for a particular future or from dissatisfaction with the present it should be evocative and engaging. The vision paints the picture of a better future, it brings to life the dream of a new reality and creates a language that describes an alternative paradigm.
"Our vision may be able to be expressed in various ways and may not even be completely clear at this stage. Because of this breadth it becomes the framework, the bigger picture that contains all we are and all we are passionate about.
"Don’t worry if you do not feel you have a clearly defined vision immediately; the degree of clarity varies between people and is also likely to change over time. We do not all have a Damascus road experience or a Dr Martin Luther King speech to draw upon. Our vision is much more likely to be something that develops with time, like a slowly developing Polaroid picture.
"There is also a different clarity that comes with distance. When we look out over a landscape the foreground is in sharper detail than the middle distance. Often we can only make out the outline or silhouette of things in the far distance. In the same way, we should expect to have more detail about the next steps we are taking than the end goal. Even a visionary like Bill Gates could not imagine all the shapes and sizes of computers that are used in our homes. So you too don’t need to have all the detail to be successful" (link).
