The key to achieving your VISION is DISCIPLINE. Discipline is defined as self imposed standards for the sake of a higher goal. Self discipline doesn’t mean there are no other forms of discipline. There is external discipline in form of laws, enforcement and much more. An effective leader doesn’t need much discipline from the outside, they self-impose discipline on themselves and that’s what we call it self discipline. Hence the key to success in your life, is finding a vision that imposes discipline on your self because vision is the source of discipline.
Discipline is the root of leadership, the very nature that attracts people to you. Because people admire discipline in other people that’s why we go and even pay to see athletes perform, celebrate them even e.g. Inzukuru, Kiprotich, Bolt not forgetting our very own Man-U football stars. It’s because of the discipline they put themselves through individually! Same is with leaders and you if you apply this principle to your self! People will begin to attract themselves to you. Your very life of discipline creates trust! People will start believing what you say. That’s why most athletes and professionals are used to advertise and market products. They are selling the discipline not the fame of that person or product.
Disciplined people live very narrow lives, vision simplifies everything. It controls all your choices cause you know where exactly you are going and the roads to take you there. No trials and errors, because you know what you shouldn’t do! Vision defines your what to do in life! It gives you your permanent address in life, your destination hence your destiny which dictates your decisions, making life simple.
Without a vision, life becomes complicated, it’s tough to say no! With vision, it’s easy to say no, you were not born to do everything. You don’t have a lot to do in life, every successful person is associated with one or two things they do. People who discover their vision, live longer, healthier, stressless (which comes from not knowing what to do).
Vision comes from God, Martha ended up cooking for God (Jesus) because she thought he was hungry! Now that’s the problem with most of us, we assume we know what God wants! We do things thinking it’s ours to do. Martha was angry because no one joined her in the cooking. She went and told Jesus, “send my sister to help me (in the cooking); be keen to know what answer Jesus gave her! “Martha, you are so busy, about many things!” That’s what most of our lives are like. Most of you who have known me, know I have not changed! I’ve grown, but I have not changed, I’m still the same guy with the same message and the same intent. Jesus further tells Martha, “…. Only few things are necessary.” Are the things you have done for the past months all necessary? You will be shocked at what you discover! Paul says, “all things are permitted for me to do, ‘I can do anything I want!’ But not everything benefits me.” Time is too short for you to make mistakes and experimentation. This is the time for intentional living. You have got to know where you are going now, it is too late to take detours and go through corners you were not supposed to go through, wondering how to get there. You better know your destination from the time you’re done reading this article. You may have the wrong company that are eating up your time hanging out with and you’re still not getting where you’re meant to. These people are distractions. Some of the books you have been buying are not necessary! With vision, you will know the exact knowledge, wisdom, counsel or skill you need to achieve your vision. You become a leader when you find what you are supposed to master. Everything you do is supposed to be motivated by your vision, everything! Vision is supposed to be the source of your human motivation.
Do you know the reason why most people are actually poor? Poverty is not really the problem, it’s the result. Most people are poor because they don’t know who they are! What do I mean by that? Vision helps you identify yourself before people in the world and because they know who you are, they know what to come to you for.
“If you want to be successful, do not seek success, seek to become a person of value.” Make your self valuable, develop a skill or your gifts, become a master at them and they will pay you for it! Have them remember you for something! Every celebrity if you are to give it thought, is good at something particular! So, become so good in an area of speciality that they can’t ignore you. The world is filled with general people, you are reading this article to seize becoming general!
Sight is the ability to see things as they are, but vision is the capacity to see things as they could be. It’s important to note that, “All true visions will be tested for authenticity.” So get used to the idea of challenges if your vision is real. They don’t come to stop your vision but rather to test it of it’s realness. If a vision is terminated by trials, it’s probably not authentic. Sometimes your vision may take you to prison, but you have got to go with it there, and come out with it… like Nelson Mandela’s vision of destroying apartheid. True vision is discovered when you discover something you can die for! What is that you would like to do, to write your part of history with? They don’t have to be great things! Just simple acts. There are little things that you are supposed to do that they can’t get rid of or erased. You were not just created to make a living and pay the bills! You were created to give life and make a difference with your gift somewhere.
Here are the things your vision chooses in your life, your future, friends, library, your use of time, use of energy, your movies, priorities and hobbies. Let your hobbies bring you to environments that expand your vision! “One of my hobbies is networking and Entrepreneurship! My favorite environment to do this is at parliament, statehouse and leadership and success-people hangout areas. Vision chooses your diet, how you spend and invest your money, your to-do list, your attitude in life, your life, your life’s plan and dictates your values.
The impact of vision on leadership: it clarifies purpose, gives direction, empowers the leader beyond his/her assets. Wise people make choices that protect their vision. Vision literally creates and attracts resources! Grants and investments are given to clear visions!
Once you know where you wanna go in life, it decides your company! I have very few friends, millions and millions of acquaintances and thousands of brothers, sisters and relatives. You are born with your brothers and sisters but you choose your friends, and your friends are equally or even more important than your brothers and sisters. A friend is anyone who is willing committed and can help you get to your destiny, s/he is closer than a brother or sister. So if you wanna be great, don’t keep company with small minded people. If you wanna be a success, stay away from failures! Great friends help you get your dream and vision stimulated, fertilized, watered, encouraged… that’s the right kind of friendship. Be careful with polluters of your dreams! Sometimes it’s people of your own house, family, etc. you’ve got to know that, that’s why you have to leave them or keep them at a very big distance for those you can’t get rid of (for instance, if its your family). You can out grow your friends! If in your group that you call friends, you are the smartest person, it’s time to leave the group! If they are always asking you all the questions, you may think that’s good… it’s bad!!! You wanna be among the company of friends who make you think, who expand you, who you ask questions too. People who aren’t going anywhere, want you to go with, that’s why they don’t want you to leave the group. Leave!!
Vision is the next best thing to time travel. Vision is seeing the future before it comes into being. Visions means you expect more of your world, to make bold steps of faith, to venture out with risk-taking courage to dare to hope for something beyond your self. Vision is so critical, it literally makes you believe in a better world.
Your body and what you show us is fake, your real self is your subconscious self (heart)! So if nothing gets into your subconscious self, it’s not real yet! The vision you have for your life creates consequences and affects how you spend your time and resources. A strong vision inspires passion. This passion transforms and controls your life. Without vision, sight has no hope. The greatest leaders who don’t focus on the present but intently on the future, are the ones who win. Living in the present is fine, but don’t put your focus there. There is too much depression. Be an agent of hope.
The ten components of writing a vision:
1. A vision should be clear and simple . When you are writing your vision down, don’t be scared that you are writing many pages. Go find a quiet place away from everybody, take no music with you, get away from TV, all distractions, go on the beach, mountain or go in the bush! Because in order for you to hear your insides, you have got to get rid of distractions. David, Moses, Jacob, Joseph and others got their visions away from distractions. Your heart can not see because your eyes have too many distractions. You can not write your vision, you got to first capture it! And you capture it by getting positioned in a certain way! Your vision is not outside of you, God hid it where you can’t lose it! Faith has taught us to go and find God’s will and for the past years you have been going from pastor to pastor, bishops, ministers, sheiks, imams, horoscopes and more! You’re in all kinds of stuff trying to discover why you were born! That is stupid, sorry to say. Life is very simple, God hid everything of the things it’s supposed to become in the self! So your future is not ahead of you, it’s trapped on the inside. A forest is not a head of the seed, it’s in the seed. Your future is in you, it’s been there all along but there is too much noise (all the music, chats with friends, etc) God is saying this is a lot of noise, He can’t even talk to you! Sometimes God will allow things and let you get stuck to a sick bed until you finally hear His voice for your life because you don’t take any time to do that! It’s important for you to understand that God does not play cat and mouse games with us! You have to know what you were meant to do, that’s why you have to write it down! Meditation is the most important aspect of prayer. Most of you talk too much in prayer. It’s like calling a friend for an outing and the whole time you are talking, when you are done, you just walk away with out listening to the other person you are out with! Is that communication?! Now that’s how most of us pray, we don’t give God a chance to speak, you never hear from Him! Thats stupid, I call it giving God instructions. That’s why meditation is VERY IMPORTANT. Your dream is never revealed to you while you are talking. Change that, the next time you go home to pray, please pray for 10 minutes, and seat for 50 minutes and just listen. You will be amazed at how loud He speaks. Finally, He gets to talk! Prayer is you talking, meditation is you listening.
2. Write all of your desires on paper. You may end up with 10 pages, don’t be alarmed. You are not yet ready for simplification. Write all your desires down, think about everything you would desire to do, just put it down on paper. My own was a full journal as a teenager in high school, don’t panic, you are getting out your desires. The Bible says, “I will give you the desires of your heart, but you got to trust me 1st.” This means you trust Him first and then He gives you the desires of your heart. In other words, He is talking about your mind. Hence, all these things you have been thinking about for the past years have been the Voice of God. The Voice of God is so simple, we ignore it because it’s not so-fixated enough. Have you ever heard men of God say something like, “The Lord spoke to me last week, He said…” and then it made you feel bad saying; “…how come He doesn’t speak to me?” Then you start thinking those are super spiritual people! But I tell you, all they meant is that, “I had an idea!!” Whether it’s those mighty men of God you know, what they actually mean, is that, ‘they had an idea that simply won’t go away!’ Then if that’s the case, then God has been speaking to you for a long time! Your vision are the thoughts that won’t leave you! Your vision, is the dream that keeps coming back for years from when you were a child. Your vision is your deepest desire to do something that keeps coming back. Not the desire for a house or car, but rather a desire to change a situation in your world, it’s there and I know you have been feeling it. Your purpose in life is the thing that makes you angry! You keep seeing it and get mad at it, no one else gets mad, just you! That’s the thing you were born to solve. Start writing down what you think is the solution to the things that make you angry. Because the thought of a righteous man (properly aligned with God) are always right! Don’t be afraid to dream, most importantly, write it down. When you write your desires down, you may end up with a lot of information on paper. It’s important then to simplify that information to concise one statement phrases. You may have 8 different things you feel are flying about, just simplify them each in sentences. “I remember having a passion to do great good and help people. So how would I do this? Simply by writing it down! I knew I would be a leader, right from high school to top! Because with leadership comes power, and with power, you have the ability to do greater good!” And then my vision started to grow, became a leader from high school, became a humanitarian community organizer serving in Red Cross, was elected to National political organs and move international… All here I was able to touch more lives and solved problems. Now here I am writing, practicing Social entrepreneurship and still serving society.
Proverbs 19:21 says, many are the plans in a man’s heart but it’s God’s purpose that prevails, vision must be kept. Capture every thought, and bring them down to the subjection (means, compare them to the word) of Christ, and then retain them if they align. Casting down imagination and every high thought that exalts it’s above everything that you know about Christ, meaning that all the others, you capture, why?! That’s Him talking to you! So if you have an idea, check if God is against that according to the word, if He is not, then you better start writing your dream very fast! So you got this big idea how to rob banks, you compare it with the bible and it says thou shall not steal, okay… you throw that out! It’s absolutely not difficult to figure out God’s will for your life. Is one other desire of yours being rich and having luxuries? Compare with the word, you will discover God’s will that you have money to help the needy and also accomplish His work. So, just being rich does not fulfill the great commission! It’s not a vision from God. (God wants you to be a reach giver) So you have to bring into captivity every thought to the obedience of Christ.
3. Document it! This means you write it down in a form that you can understand. And your goal is to try and get your entire life purpose in one sentence. Now that may take a long time to do, but it’s possible to do it. You want to reduce your life into one sentence. That means you have to somehow identify your gifts and dreams to one sentence to a point you know that this is who I AM. This is what I will bring to the world, this is what I will offer my generation, this is me and this is what they need from me. That’s your vision in life.
4. You must communicate that simple sentence. Put it in a brochure, a placard out of it, put it everywhere you are, talk about it to people. People exist to help you, but they got to find you first.
5. Make a plan based on that sentence. A plan is your strategy to get to your vision. God doesn’t plan for you, you simply have to do it your self.
6. Revise your vision. Hence you need to keep going back to check if you are on the right course. Don’t be afraid to give God something to adjust. “I asked him to adjust my vision, not to just to help people, have power but also to do business, write and speak!
7. Finally, Evaluate your vision. Keep judging your self, “…am I doing what I was born to do? Or am I going off track?”
10 Components of a Vision:
1. Should be clear and simple
2. Should be visual and imaginative
3. Should be focused on change
4. Should demand sacrifice
5. Should be communicated with contagious optimism
6. Should be personal
7. Should be relentlessly stated and restated
8. Should be personified by the leader
9. Should be a broad visita, not detailed plan
10. A vision should be difficult- even seemingly impossible to achieve. ( out of reach but not out of sight)
Few Suggestions:
1. Your greatest enemy is distraction.
2. The greatest distractions to your vision is not doing bad things, but good things. The greatest enemy of right is not wrong, it’s good. Satan knows your too smart to do something wrong, so he basically focuses on getting you to do something good. Because when you are doing something good, you think you are doing something right. You were born to find out what is right for you and if do find it, everything else remains good or wrong.
So preoccupation with a good thing, is no substitution for the right thing. Stay with what you are born to do. That means you should not accept every opportunity that comes along. Even if they are good. Don’t let people come into your life and change your vision to do something good with them.
3. Vision comes in phases and is fulfilled in phases because God gives it in phases. What you are doing right now, you may not be doing in 10 years, it may just be a part of it, God expands it.
Learn from others, but never become them! Be yourself, the ultimate joy of life. The greatest thing in the world for you to discover is yourself. What youHow to identify, your vision and write it down.
God bless you.
-EW
Stay connected