The best way to predict the future is to invent it—and we had better start now.
“Aude aliquid dignum” – Latin: “Dare something worthy”
How do you create your future? Do you predict your future based on what’s happened in the past? Have you limited what you imagine about your future to protect yourself from failure? Have your “good ideas” been steeped in a context of “realistic mediocrity?”
A powerful way to “predict your future” is to invent it from a compelling vision big enough to impact Humanity. When you fully commit to your vision and step into Visionary Leadership, then every fiber of your being and all your actions are magical expressions of that vision. As a visionary leader, who you are is created from your vision, and that you, in turn, manifests your vision.
A vision goes beyond a “good idea” by not only the unprecedented nature of the vision but the commitment of the person articulating it. When a visionary leader speaks, our listening is based on our trust in their credibility. When Steve Jobs spoke, people listened. When Warren Buffet speaks, people listen. When you speak, do people listen?
Vision touches, moves and inspires people and engages them to act. When Kennedy said in 1962, “The time has now come to send a man to the moon and return him safely again,” the needed fuel had not even been invented yet! And then, launched by his Visionary Leadership, in 1969 a man stepped on the moon. Vision is pure possibility with no need for historical evidence to support it. It is in the realm of the impossible; in other words, expect miracles.
Children are brilliantly optimistic about possibility. Unfortunately, we turn our children into adults who become “realistic” and fight for no possibility. As adults, we want to avoid the risk of a Vision and seek the protection of certainty. But, certainty is an illusion, and it is the feast where our EGOs and protection dine.
Do you talk about doing things rather than making them happen? Are you always getting ready to get started? Or, do you commit yourself in spite of your doubts and Ego? Do you live unstopped by obstacles and unfazed by other’s opinions?
Dream big. Risk boldly. Create a compelling vision worth living into. Be willing to fail. Expect miracles. Be unreasonable. Have it matter that you lived.
“An individual has not begun to live until he can rise above the narrow horizons of his particular individualistic concerns to the broader concerns of all humanity. Every person must decide, at some point, whether they will walk in the light of creative altruism or in the darkness of destructive selfishness. This is the judgment. Life’s most persistent and urgent question is, what are you doing for others? – Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.