Vision - Mirror to ourselves

 

 

 "Vision without action is a daydream. Action without vision is a nightmare." - Japanese Proverb

"If you want to build a ship, don't herd people together to collect wood and don't assign them tasks and work, but rather teach them to long for the endless immensity of the sea." - Antoine de Saint-Exupery

 "Vision is the art of seeing things invisible." - Jonathan Swift

 "Create your future from your future, not your past." - Werner Erhard

"People only see what they are prepared to see." - Ralph Waldo Emerson

These are some very powerful quotes and sayings about vision by some famous people. There were a lot more on the website where I picked up these from. A couple more were there connecting vision to leadership, dreams and actions.

The reason these quotations stood out for me was that they talked about potential. I love the word potential. Maybe it will be the topic of one of my upcoming blogs. If you like people to dream big, make them see how beautiful it will look. May them love the place where they want to reach so that all their five senses are focused on getting there. They can dream it, feel it and love it with all their might.

Help them see something invisible. Expand their minds to see a possibility so that it just might make them afraid and excited in the same breath.

I also quite often see that vision formation has a  lot to do with age and sometimes also gender.  Vision formation, goal setting or even aspirations are generally associated with the younger generation.  Ideally, they are supposed to be looking at making thing happen for themselves. However, by the time a person reaches the 50s they are gearing up for retirement and eventually settling in to wait for last breath.

Similarly, under some circumstances, vision formation is the prerogative of men. Women are not taught and even discouraged to think for themselves. Therefore, making a vision seems far- fetched.

The reason for the thought process could stem from exhaustion to lack of awareness or an ingrained mindset of this is how it is. The realization then needs to come at two levels-

Age-based - Putting away having a vision after hitting a particular age is like saying, what is the point of exercising if we all have to die one day. It doesn’t make sense. You do it more for today than for the future. Vision makes your today worthwhile.

Gender-based - My favourite and very personal. 'Vision is not for me because I am not allowed to think.'  Usually comes from women. I often say women live by  a script handed out to them. Unless someone challenges the script, chances are that things will not change for a long time to come. Challenge the script. I would rather that people start thinking for themselves. It takes times and effort but it is not difficult.

Getting over our own bias takes acknowledging that we have confined ourselves in these silos. Let us not be a victim of our past and strongly aim towards the future while making our present wonderful.