Three Missing Links for Transforming Vision to Reality (and how to leverage them)

Orison Marden Swett once said, “There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.”

James Allen published a beautiful book in 1901 called “As a Man Thinketh”, in which he wrote “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.”

Henry David Thoreau told us “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.”

And Napoleon Hill proclaimed, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

These quotes speak to our ability to create that which we most desire.

It is not some kind of magic or special power. And it is not something we must rely on others for. It is an innate gift that we gradually learn to utilize as we become more and more aligned with what is most true within us.

This gift is quite simply the strength of the feeling we generate when we identify with something so strongly that we take it to be real. With continual and unwavering belief, whatever we hold in our minds and our hearts in this way becomes our reality.

I began reading about the power of positive thinking and visualization as a teenager.

I was enthralled by stories of athletes who imagined themselves sinking those critical shots and performed at game time exactly as they rehearsed in their minds. I used positive affirmations about the person I was becoming and the wonderful things coming into my life. I created large vision boards for myself that featured pictures or symbols that represented things or experiences I longed for. I envisioned movies in my head in which I performed anything from sports to public speaking powerfully and passionately and with great success.

Some of these visions and dreams have come true over the years. And others have not.

After reflecting at length on what differentiated the dreams and visions that came to fruition from those that didn’t, I have come to the conclusion that there are three significant factors.

Alignment with a Higher Purpose

 One is quite simply that some of the things my mind (and ego) believed I needed to have were not in the best interests of my spirit, aligned with my true purpose, or in service to something greater than myself. Believe me, I have had many occasions to thank God for unanswered prayers that I originally believed would have been the best thing that could have happened.

Don’t push the river.

The energy you would otherwise expend trying to make something happen, or lamenting over something that fell through can be much better directed. Our willingness to let go is buffered by a strong faith that things are happening in a way that will serve our highest interest. In retrospect, we often see how things fell together in a way that helped us get where we are now – though at the time it just felt frustrating and disappointing. Cultivating this faith helps us to recognize and act on new and different opportunities that are much more aligned with our true purpose in life.

Passionate Detachment

The second factor often present when things didn’t play out the way I envisioned was my fervent attachment to needing something happen exactly the way (or at just the time) I thought it should – or attachment to anything in particular. While it is true that we need to be passionate about our visions and dreams, it is important to remain willing to let go of the details and trust that something bigger than ourselves will step in to collaborate with us.

This higher intelligence, to which I believe we are all innately connected, is capable of orchestrating things far more magnificently than we could ever attempt to do. It is important that we are willing, but when we step over the line and become too willful our thoughts and actions have a way of throwing a monkey wrench in things.

The urgency in our desire can have us acting out of desperation rather than trust.

As a result, instead of identifying with that which we most want, we embody the state of not having it and trying fervently to do anything to change that. Taking our current state to be more real than what we truly desire, the power of thought works perfectly to deliver what our minds have been fixated on – leaving us in a state of want, working madly to make everything happen the way we think it should.

Try practicing passionate detachment.

We must learn to give ourselves to our visions and dreams while allowing for divine timing, unforeseen incidents and the hand of providence, which often enables things to happen in ways that exceed our wildest expectations. I like to call this state passionate detachment.

 “Destiny grants us our wishes, but in its own way, in order to give us something beyond our wishes.”

~ Johann Wolfgang von Goethe

Embodiment of Your Vision

You can dream great dreams, but if they lack feeling and passion, they fall as flat as the set of a five act play after the audience has left the final performance. We must go beyond simply watching the movies we create in our minds that have us sinking that shot, mesmerizing that audience, or jumping for joy at our victories. Rather than seeing ourselves up there on the screen of our minds, we must see from the eyes of the person in the movie.

Feeling is as important as seeing, because it leads to proper action.

We must experience in our minds and our bodies the feelings associated with that which we desire most – the elation of victory, the liberating release of having completed something we were unsure or afraid of, and the sweet satisfaction and joy that accompanies success.

Similarly, it is not enough to create a visual wish list or a series of affirmations or declarations about the things we would like to have, achieve or experience. We need to look upon these things as gifts that have already been given to us and feel the gratitude welling up in our hearts for having received them. Only then will we be compelled to truly ACT in ways that bring it about.

Practice grateful certainty.

The state of grateful certainty we need to give ourselves to is similar to the way you may feel after ordering something via the internet. After clicking the purchase button and entering your shipping address and credit card information, you can have reasonable certainty that what you ordered is on its way. With this assurance, you identify with the state of already having owned that which you just bought – even though you do not yet physically possess it. It is this same state of graceful anticipation, gratitude, and faith that those who seem to magically attract exactly what they want into their lives have learned to enter into time and time again.

Do you have some secret dream of becoming more than you currently are?

Of tapping into the vast field of potential that lies waiting for you to discover it? See if you can see through the eyes of someone who has already realized your dream, and enjoy each moment as though you are reliving the memory of its beautiful unfolding. Allow your vision to inform your action, and trust that as you give yourself fully to living your dream, you simply cannot fail.

This process is just one of the many techniques taught in  The Pinocchio Principle Unleashed: The Real Leader’s Guide to Accessing the Freedom & Flow of Your Unique Genius.  Though the spring group session is now full, you can join the waiting list to be notified of the next session.

Image by fancycrave1 from Pixabay

Harnessing the Power of Thought

As many of you already know, I’ve been working on writing a book on authentic leadership for over three years now (and I’m almost done!) The process of writing has illuminated many things for me, one of which is the power I believe each of us has to create the reality we experience. Last week, I wrote an entire chapter on that. And I found myself musing over the fact that while many of the experiences I’ve envisioned for myself have come to be, others have not. As I pondered the reasons for that, this month’s ezine article, Harnessing the Power of Thought, emerged. Below is an excerpt and you can click the link to read the full article.

Harnessing the Power of Thought

“There are powers inside of you which, if you could discover and use, would make of you everything you ever dreamed or imagined you could become.”

~Orison Marden Swett

The above quote is one of many I have seen over the years that references our ability to create that which we most desire. In his beautiful book “As a Man Thinketh”, first published in 1901, James Allen writes “Dream lofty dreams, and as you dream, so shall you become. Your Vision is the promise of what you shall one day be; your ideal is the prophecy of what you shall at last unveil.” Henry David Thoreau wrote “If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with success unexpected in common hours.” And Napoleon Hill affirmed, “What the mind of man can conceive and believe, it can achieve.”

This power is not the result of a magic pill or some kind of sorcery. Rather than being something we must rely on others for, it is a gift we are all born with that we gradually learn to utilize as we become more and more aligned with what is most true within us. This gift is quite simply the strength of the feeling we generate when we identify with something so specifically that we take it to be real. With sustained and unwavering belief, whatever we hold in our minds and our hearts in this way becomes our reality.

As a teenager I began to read a lot about the power of positive thinking and visualization. I was enthralled by stories of athletes who would spend time imagining themselves sinking those critical shots to go on at game time and perform exactly as they rehearsed in their minds. I utilized affirmations of positive intent around the person I was becoming and the wonderful things that were coming into my life. I played with creating vision boards for myself, made from large poster paper with various pictures of things I wanted to have or symbols that represented experiences I longed for glued onto it. I created movies in my head that featured me performing anything from sports to public speaking powerfully and passionately with great success. Many of these visions and dreams have come true over the years. And some have not.

I have reflected at length on what it might be that differentiated the dreams and visions that came to fruition from those that didn’t. And I have come to the conclusion that there are three significant factors… click here to read the full article