Personal Vision is one of the distinctive characteristics of Leadership and of every person committed to their personal and professional growth, that is, of all those who face their life from self-leadership.
The consensus on the importance that the concept of Vision implies can be verified in the fact that most of the books that have been published in recent years on topics as diverse as strategy, business management, leadership or teamwork, of a form or another refer to this topic.
Personal Vision involves imagining the destination we want to build, creating the image of the life we aspire to live, projecting the way we want to be and what we would like to do. This Vision, made up of the values, interests and aspirations of each one of us, gives purpose and meaning to our lives and establishes the direction towards which we direct our short and medium term objectives. It shows us the way forward and gives us inspiration, enthusiasm and commitment. It propels us forward and gives us the strength that enables us to face challenges and overcome difficulties. It also gives us a special lens through which we look at the world.
One of the central characteristics of Personal Vision is related to the emotionality that it generates. When we really connect with our deepest desires, when we dare to give shape to our dreams, when we have the courage to take the path and go for them, the spark is lit that ignites the sacred fire of visionaries. From there comes the confidence in ourselves, the faith to reach the desired goal, the energy to move beyond the inconveniences, the perseverance to insist and persist until we find where.
The ability to create and commit to your Personal Vision is one of the distinguishing characteristics of every leader, entrepreneur or creator; of those people who are not satisfied with things happening to them, but who make them happen. They imagine, create, generate new realities and on the way reinvent themselves. They build the life they want to live. They doubt and fear like every human being, but they face their own limitations and accept the challenges posed by the pursuit of their dreams. These characteristics and this emotionality are not the heritage of higher beings, but of individuals committed to achieving their goals.
We can affirm that it is a distinctive characteristic of leadership, to commit to making their Vision come true and to transmit this conviction and mystique to the people who accompany them. There are thousands of everyday examples that corroborate this that we affirm, but if we were to look for a historical example of how the force of a Vision generates an individual and collective energy that can produce transformations and achieve great objectives, we would necessarily have to refer to the pacifist leader Martin Luther king.
In his fight for racial equality in the United States, his main weapon was to convey to his people his Vision and his conviction that it would be a reality if everyone committed themselves to achieving it. In a memorable speech she began by saying "I have a dream" and throughout her speech she transmitted the characteristics of that dream, building in the minds and hearts of her followers the image of that desired future. It said: "I have a dream that one day my four children will live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by their value as a person." The force of this Vision survived the leader (who was assassinated some time later) and became an important promoter of the process of struggle for racial equality that that country lived through.
We could ask ourselves , where does the power of Vision come from? Because it awakens passion and enthusiasm? Vision represents what we deeply desire, what gives our life true meaning and purpose. It drives us to take on challenges and face setbacks. It makes us invincible even in defeat.
The possibility of making our greatest wishes come true is what ultimately justifies our existence. Being connected with our Vision allows us to deploy the forces that nest in our hearts.
For it to effectively fulfill this role of centrality in our lives, it is important to consider what are the characteristics to take into account in the construction of our Personal Vision.
The clearer and more precise the image of the desired future, the more power it will have. The more "real" the representation we have in our mind of how we will look when we achieve our goal, the more force of attraction and impulse it will produce within us. These representations act as an internal programming that triggers the mechanisms, stimuli and sensations necessary to act effectively according to the established objective.
Walt Disney used to say "If you can dream it, you can do it." It is that, if we reflect, we will realize that everything happens twice. First it happens in our mind and then we take it into action and make it happen. To such an extent this works like this, that many coaches have incorporated as part of the training of athletes and athletes, this technique of creating a powerful mental image where they are visualized achieving an excellent performance, winning the match or competition.
Dr. Denis Waitley, who worked on astronaut training at NASA and later used this program with Olympians, argues that: “When you visualize, you materialize. This is a curious fact about the mind. We would train Olympians to perform their performance only mentally and then hook them up to sophisticated biofeedback equipment. It was extraordinary because the same muscles were activated and in the same sequence when they did the race mentally and when they did it on the track. How is it possible? Because the mind cannot distinguish if you are really doing it or if it is just a practice. If you have been there mentally, you will be there with your body.
For the Vision to effectively act as a mobilizing force towards the desired destination, it must consist of something relevant and valuable to the person. Obviously, the value judgment is something particular that each one performs for himself. What is valuable to one may mean nothing to another. Someone can be seen traveling the world and getting to know different cultures, another performing social tasks or in charge of an institution, and another living in the mountains and writing a novel. Robert Fritz affirms that: “It does not matter what the Vision is, but what the Vision achieves”, and for the Vision to acquire this stimulating effect and provide concentration and energy for action, it must represent something deeply felt and valued by the person. Something that in turn is challenging and motivating. It may be that the Vision is changing or transforming with the evolution of the individual, but the important thing is that it has the greatest relevance for each stage of his life.
Establishing a Vision is an act of hope and courage. Every new reality has its gestation in a Vision, in someone who imagines a desired future in order to start building it. The call to create these new worlds is the foundational fact of leadership. If out of fear, lack of self-esteem or fear of failure, we diminish the relevance and intensity of our Vision and only set ourselves a smaller objective, it becomes one more obligation, something that we have to do out of necessity. There our Vision is blurred and it no longer exercises its role of projecting us and propelling us into the future. Miguel Ángel stated that “ The worst danger is not that our goal is very high and we do not reach it, but that it is very low and we achieve it.”. It is preferable to stumble, fall and get back up but know that we are on our way, than to arrive smoothly and very neatly to a destination that is not ours.
