The Power of Vision

As a child, you may have dreamed of doing something great one day. That was the beginning of your "vision". Everyone knows that vision means having the ability to see. When you have a vision for your life, you see a future that you want to make real. If your vision is powerful and compelling enough, it can provide the impetus to turn the future you envisaged in reality, because every vision, no matter how fantastic it may seem at first, has a potential to become a reality.

The individual who has not guiding vision is like a ship drifting at sea t no set course. On the other hand, the person with strong vision sees possibilities in their future, which they are determined to realize. The power of vision inspires creativity and resourcefulness and empowers you to reach your full potential.

You can do anything with the rest of your life - what will that be? We are too quick to see things that are beyond our current capabilities as impossible, now and for all time, and so we give up before we've even begun. Yet, if you take a good look around you, you'll probably find someone like you currently doing precisely the thing that you wrote off as unacheivable.

Your life vision needs to be bifocal, taking on both your immediate and your distant future. You must focus not only on your ultimate goal, which in some cases may lie may years ahead, but also on the intermediate objectives along the way, such as the exams you might need to pass each year to graduate from college.

At very practical level, your vision serves to organize your goals and priorities within a clear time frame and sets for you a direction and a destination. It draws on what is important to you - your values, hopes, and dreams. The intermediate goals that you set help you to identify benchmark achievements along the route. In this way, your vision gradually builds, gathering momentum as you move toward your destination, energizing you and motivating you to keep going until you reach your goal.

Think about how your life would look if you identified a master plan and then deployed every available resource and opportunity in order to achieve that purpose. That would be your vision. Such a vision might look something like this: I will be very successful in my career and enjoy it very much; i will live in my ideal home and have everything I need to live comfortably and happily; I will share my life with those I love - my families and friends - and have plenty of time to enjoy leisure activities with them; I will make sure that i get enough exercise, sleep and proper nourishment to maintain my mind, body and spirit in peak shape; I will control my finances so that I can adequately provide for my family's needs; I will make steady progress toward the goals I have set for my life's achievement and legacy.

You can create your vision through a combination of thought and action. Start by identifying the values and principles that guide you in life; next, create objectives to achieve those important things over time; then prioritize to make the best use of your time and be sure that the most important things get accomplished. You will have to manage your time well to be highly successful in your efforts. As you take these steps, your vision will materialize, but it will not be set in stone - you will need to refine it regularly throughout the rest of your life, as you continue to seek balanced living.