What Kind of Vision Do You Possess? 

Last post I told you that there are some beliefs, habits, and even people, that no longer belong in your life.  Once you realize and recognize that, you can finally give yourself permission to move toward self-mastery, recreating yourself, and living a prosperous life.   

Crafting the new you is not accomplished by devoting energy to tearing down the past, but on building the future. That process is driven by the vision you have for what kind of life you will live.  Virtually everything that manifests in your life is a result of the vision you have for yourself.

It’s remarkable how many people believe they don’t have a vision.  I’ve had people tell me just that hundreds of times at my seminars and on social media.  In you polled the next 100 people you met on the street, it’s a safe bet that a majority of them would tell you that they have no vision for themselves.  They would be wrong.

Because everybody has a vision.  What many don’t understand is that a vision isn’t always an optimistic visualization of an idealized future.  That’s only one possible type of a vision.  In reality, there are three possible types of visions you can have for yourself.

• Neutral
• Negative
• Positive

A surprisingly large number of people in the world have a neutral vision. (These are the ones who believe they have no vision.  They don’t realize they actually have a neutral one.) They don’t expect too much out of life, and that’s what they manifest – most of their goals are small and pedestrian.  Their primary goal is to make it through the week without getting fired, so they can binge Netflix all weekend, without thinking of their lives of quiet desperation until the alarm goes off on Monday morning.  For them, life is just something that happens to you.

A troubling number of people are in the group with a negative vision.  They actually expect bad things to happen in their life so of course, they do. They subscribe to the “life’s a bitch and then you die” philosophy.  People with a negative vision make statements like:

• I just can’t get a break.
• My student loans are too big to escape.
• I don’t have the right degree to compete.
• I’m always a day late and a dollar short.
• If it wasn’t for bad luck, I’d have no luck at all.
• All the good men (women) are already taken or gay (straight).

Notice the frequency of the word “I” in those statements above.  That’s because holding a negative vision for your life is actually a narcissistic tendency.  People with a negative vision revel in victimhood, and never miss an opportunity to regale you with stories of their latest lay-off, medical condition, or horrific traffic accident.  Their vision becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, reinforcing their negative beliefs. If they don’t get a strong enough jolt to question their beliefs and mindset, they follow a path spiraling downward to illness, poverty and misery.

Obviously, you want to be in the positive group.  Unfortunately, the membership conventions for this group have sparse attendance these days.

The reason so many people live in lack and limitation is because they reached the transition point to adulthood with low self-esteem, and then knowingly or unknowingly, created a negative or neutral vision for their future. 

Because your level of self-esteem determines what kind of vision you have, very few people have a positive vision for their lives.  (Because so few make it to adulthood with a positive self-esteem.)

People with a positive vision view their lives with optimism, hope, and anticipation.  They have goals and dreams and they are proactively working toward achieving them.  Now you either do this from foolish naivety (as I did when I stated at age 15 that I would be a millionaire by the time I was 35) or seasoned experience (as Steph Curry does when he launches a 3-pointer and doesn’t need to watch to know it’s going in).  Either way works, as long as you believe it.

Much as the negative vision people create a self-fulfilling prophecy of doom, the people with a positive vision create a self-fulfilling prophecy of prosperity.  Make no mistake.  Each of those sets of will influence the results the person holding it accomplishes.  It’s that way, and it works that way all the time, with no exceptions.  Please pay close attention to what I say next, because I’m only going to say it five times:

Your current situation in life is the direct result of the vision you have.

Your current situation in life is the direct result of the vision you have.

Your current situation in life is the direct result of the vision you have.

Your current situation in life is the direct result of the vision you have.

Your current situation in life is the direct result of the vision you have.

Please don’t allow yourself to live in denial by thinking your life is a random happenstance or that you have a powerful positive vision but are constantly experiencing negative outcomes by some exception to universal laws.  Of course tragedies, accidents, and misfortunes occur to everyone.  But endless cycles of them only occur to people who co-create them with their negative expectations.

This leads us to the nexus of the issue: The way in which you create your vision, and how to upgrade it when necessary. 

If you've been reading this blog regularly, you should have a pretty solid idea about the cause and effect relationship between programming, daily habits, and the end result (your life).  Allow me to crystalize it into a tangible formula:

• Your programming causes you to develop core foundational beliefs. (In the six areas we discussed earlier.)
• Your core foundational beliefs determine what type of vision you have for your life. (Neutral, negative, or positive.)
• That vision determines your daily habits and actions.
• Your daily habits and actions create your destiny.

As you create a new and improved version of yourself, a prosperous life is a noble outcome to strive for.  And a prosperous life isn’t created in a microwave but a crockpot, and the ingredients are your daily habits.  Some of the most seemingly mundane habits – your diet, exercise, how much you sleep, self-development time, etc. – are the building blocks of your health, happiness, and prosperity.  How you do anything is pretty much how you do everything.

You don’t actually create a prosperous life.  You chose the right daily habits and they create a prosperous life.

Daily habits they are the foundational element of happiness, health, and success.  (And probably everything worth striving for.)  If you make a habit of exercise, eating and drinking healthy, better health is a result.  If you make a habit of treating people with respect, empathy, and caring, better relationships are a result.  If you make a habit of daily personal growth and self-development, success is the result.

Just as you can use first principles to create a viable business model, you can use them to create a new you.  In this case that means going back to the primary driver of the formula I shared: the programming you’re exposed to.  Change the first factor and it changes all of the following ones:

Improve your programming and you improve your vision.

Upgrade your vision and you’ll upgrade your daily actions.

Create prosperous daily habits and you create a prosperous life.

We'll explore the ways you can take charge of your programming in the next post.  In the meantime, please share your thoughts and comments below.

Peace,

- RG