The Reality of Visions

It is not uncommon to hear responses like; ‘all you need is to have a vision’, ‘without a vision you can’t achieve anything’, ‘if you can envision it you can achieve it’ and so on when you bother to query succeeding members of the society about the route that leads to great achievements.

Visioning has therefore rightly become a norm when discussing youth and development. But as truly important as visioning is to having a future of relevant achievement, many people have been tutored wrongly and therefore mistaken it for ‘vague fantasies’ – unfounded imaginations, picture cut-outs from magazines etc.

Many while trying to be true to the quote, ‘you cannot feature in a future you can’t picture’, which points to the unspoken relevance of visioning, have hurriedly resulted to creating intangible fantasies for themselves in the name of visioning.

So called success teachers, most of whom are not even as wise as the people who patronize them, are also helping to give succor to a bunch of self-seeking people holding on to these bleak, unattainable pictures called visions. A vision is not a vague imagination of your goals or intending achievements neither is it something you come up with when you close your eyes for two minutes. It is beyond all the wishful desires you come up with when you do those exercises. A vision is also beyond an obsession for a good or better life or future.

I remember once at a youth development seminar I attended, the organizer – passionate speaker when it comes to youth development, gave a task to all present, ‘I’ll give you 2 minutes to close your eyes and envision the kind of future you see for yourself and then two people will volunteer to tell us what they see’. Before coming to their responses, note; you cannot create a vision for yourself in just 2 minutes of closing your eyes. Visions are built, developed and modified over time.

Back to our discussion, the responses that were given that night was reflective of why many people remain under achievers in life despite years of attending various success seminars, reading all sorts of books and engaging in every type of spiritual gymnastic. Once their definition of vision is wrong or inappropriate, there is virtually nothing they can achieve along that line.

Now to their responses, first was a lady probably in her mid twenties or older. Feeling good about herself and her newly painted imagination, she said, ‘I see myself standing before a crowd’. The organizer was as bewildered as I was, come on anyone could be standing in front of a crowd. It could be a garage tout addressing his fellow outlaws in mobilization to disrupt an ongoing park election, religious leader talking to his congregation, an activist mobilizing a rally, a politician addressing party loyalists, or a leader delivering a speech at a global summit. Therefore, that (I see myself standing before a crowd) for a vision is inappropriate, incomplete, unrealistic, lifeless and unachievable. Or how do you achieve what you do not even know? You see it’s very clear why many people do not actually achieve anything close to what they claim is their vision in life.

Many people’s so called vision lack definiteness, reality and life which are integral to creating a vision that is little spoken of by many teachers. I’ll give another example of these vague fantasies that has crippled many promising youth. This one is from the diary of a 23 year old and he writes, ‘by the time I’m 33 I will be driving a big car, living in a big house and be respected in the society’. This to me is another vision lacking in definiteness and will leave our young friend struggling all his life to buy a car he can’t even recognize when he sees it. He has placed before himself a future he cannot know even if he gets there.

Now I’ll attempt to describe to you what it really is to create a vision for yourself and succeed in achieving it. Remember the problem with the examples I have described above is that they lack the definiteness to drive the individual and direct the path to take to achievement in life.

Keep the following in mind and you’d be able to create the vision that you’ll really be able to become.

-         Visions are not created by imagination; it takes time and a process of building.

-         Your vision is built and not arrived at suddenly.

-         Your vision should have life; it should be real and not a phantasm. It should be real enough to drive you and drive the path in which you would walk to acheiving it.

A simple example of what I mean by real is this; think of an advert frame that says “A conference you’d love to attend is holding at the Sheraton”. Leaving home you would definitely not know in which direction to drive and you wouldn’t get anywhere. Why? Because the destination – the Sheraton – which represents your vision is not clear; same way I concluded that the lady in our earlier example will not end up addressing any gathering no matter how small. Her vision lacks the definiteness to chart a course for her just like ‘the Sheraton’ lacks the definiteness to take you to the conference you want to attend. You wouldn’t know if it’s the Lagos or Abuja Sheraton, where in the Sheraton is the conference holding and so on.

Another version of the advert says the conference was holding at the Lagos Sheraton hotel. Now at least you know you don’t have to head for Abuja if you where in Lagos. The added definiteness will ensure that you drive towards Ikeja and not towards Abuja. But there might still be a problem, where in the Lagos Sheraton is the conference actually holding? So a perfect advert clip will be The Banquet Hall of the Lagos Sheraton Hotels and Towers, at 2 pm. With this you can’t get lost and you wouldn’t arrive the venue late or too early. It is obvious that the more definiteness you have the easier it is for you to draw the path you will follow to achieving it. So also your vision should be like a destination where you are heading, clear enough to ensure that even a novice doesn’t get lost.

This is the essence of a well drawn out realistic vision. To help determine the best route you would choose to take. It is not just enough to say I want to have a lot of money but when you say I want to have N100, 000 it becomes clearer. After making your destination clearer i.e. giving life to your vision, you then decide to pursue it. If you do not decide to pursue your sketch, it remains a desire or just wishful thinking. The “desires you decide to pursue is actually your vision”. Don’t get confused yet.

Definiteness is first and decision to pursue is next. If I wished to own a car, it’s vague and undefined. But when I desire a Nissan Primera™, it’s definite, while a Nissan Primera™ worth N450, 000 is even more definitive. It then becomes your vision when you take the decision to actually buy the car at a defined time and work towards it. This way you wouldn’t be lost between options which makes you achieve nothing.

If you have a year to purchase your car, the definiteness of your vision makes it easy for you to draw a plan for achieving it because it would take a different plan to buy a Nissan Primera™ worth N450, 000 from a Toyota Corolla™ ’08 worth N3.2 million. So until you decide to pursue and achieve the definite picture you have painted it is not yet a vision.

Just for your remembrance and easy reference, vision defined is, “the decision to pursue your definite desires - which has the capacity to determine the paths you follow subsequently”.

In conclusion, vision is not vague but real, it should be definite and should determine the path you follow in life, the places you visit, the people you choose to meet etc.