If you are setting out to do something in your work or business that you feel is important and needed in the world, you most likely have a big vision whether you know it or not.
It needn’t be a totally new concept, but you will have your ideas and your personality attached to it, so a common profession can still be visionary and unique – and should be.
Your vision might be so awesome that you can’t imagine how it could ever happen. Ever heard the term big hairy audacious goals?
It could also seem too simple, yet be profoundly useful or important. How about dental floss for goodness sake?
It might be artistic or innovative, putting the creator (you) in a position of vulnerability. When you create, your soul is speaking through your work and that’s where infinite potential comes alive and scares the pants off people.
According to Merriam Webster, a visionary “has or is marked by foresight and imagination.” The definition goes on in a way that reveals Webster to be a bit cynical – noting that vision is “incapable of being realized or achieved.”
Men and women who want to excel are visionaries who believe that their visions needn’t remain in their imaginations, but that they can be fully realized.
Embracing a vision, clarifying it and really allowing yourself to see it in your mind’s eye in detail is a critical success factor. Knowing why you want what you want will drive you to make it a reality.
Although work is equated with making money, money is not a powerful enough reason to do what is necessary to reach a visionary goal. Reaching goals takes persistence, effort, thought, and overcoming multiple (sometimes constant) challenges.
Typically, there must be something greater than dollars that will emerge from your efforts to solve a problem you see in the world. Think beyond money initially, and then circle back to monetizing as part of strategy.
A clear vision informs you of what you want to create and your why drives you with obsessive determination. From that end goal, you can reverse engineer the strategies and steps of your how. Be flexible with form as it can take many shapes and change as needed.
Here are some key takeaways on visioning from some who have realized the seemingly unrealizable.
- Everyone will tell you that it can’t work. Even if your idea isn’t new, but just different, you will hear very little about how great an idea it is and much about how it will never work. Truly innovative solutions to perceived problems will fall mostly on deaf ears.Kara Goldin, founder of HINT water, was told by the heads of leading beverage companies, that her water couldn’t be made without preservatives. They fully believed that, and she proved them wrong instead of listening to their expertise.
- Fully connect to your vision. The response you get from others might be negative, and yet you need to stay positive. You and your team need to regularly connect to your vision. That’s the premise behind vision boards. Pictures are in your face reminding you of the future you desire.The day to day work and challenges can cause business owners or career changers to forget the big vision. Plenty of regular, necessary, unglamorous work distracts from your dream and slows momentum. So, continually tune in to your vision as a reminder.
- Your vision should be scary, energizing and exciting all at the same time. Outwardly, it may look impossible to many. You have to be able to visually see it. No one else can see it, so you have to be able to see every aspect in technicolor to explain it to others clearly. This is not a boring mission statement, this is an emotionally charged, passion oriented, future vision, clearly described.
- Be very vocal. You should be shouting about it from the rooftops. All energy should go towards your vision. Allison Maslan says you should talk about it until it’s annoying everyone around you.
- Think even beyond your vision. There are means goals and end goals. Start by going straight to your end goals. (Remember Steven Covey’s “start with the end in mind”?) Money is a means goal.
Vishen Lakhiani, CEO of Mindvalley recommends going straight to the end experience you want. Ask yourself how you want to grow to get this experience. After you get the experience you want, how will you contribute? This sequence of experience, growth and contribution lays out an even greater blueprint for your soul and your business.
Vishen also said “don’t try to be inspiring, instead be inspired.”
Visionaries are inspired and maybe a bit obsessed. This is precisely why they create what they want from their imagination. What thought in your head can become a picture in your mind and a tangible reality in the future?
